Taylor Swift Gave Her First Ever Gold Record To Eric Church

Wonder if he’ll get another one soon.

Taylor Swift is gearing up to release her 12th studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl, which drops everywhere tomorrow. And there’s no doubt that after it drops by midnight, it will be certified gold within…I dunno, a few minutes. Swifties will be counting down the minutes to hit play, and she’s already dropped several vinyl variants that have sold out, so it will almost certainly be one of – if not THE – highest selling album of 2025.

Taylor’s truly a global superstar, with all of her albums being certified Platinum (or Multi-Platinum) by the RIAA for selling at least a million copies, and her 2008 album Fearless being certified Diamond for selling over 10 million copies.

But back in 2006, Taylor Swift was just an up-and-coming country artist celebrating her first gold record with her self-titled debut album.

And when she finally got that first gold record, she gave it to Eric Church.

Now, Taylor Swift and Eric Church might seem like polar opposites. But that’s exactly why Taylor was tapped to replace Church when he was unceremoniously kicked off the Me and My Gang Tour with Rascal Flatts in 2006.

According to Church, the combination of him and Flatts was a marriage that was doomed to fail from the start:

“Horrible match. Horrible combination. 

We didn’t do things exactly like we were supposed to. We played too long, we were a little loud, we were a little rowdy…lot of rules, lot of rules.

And I broke ’em. All of ’em. And got fired from the tour at Madison Square Garden.”

Now, Rascal Flatts apparently remembers the situation a little differently, with former lead singer Gary LeVox responding to Church:

“It wasn’t that you were too loud or too rowdy. You just played too long.”

But either way, Church was off the tour.

And that opened up a spot for a young up-and-coming artist named Taylor Swift to take his place.

During a recent interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Church recalled getting a call from Swift after he was replaced on the tour:

“My first major arena tour, I was invited to no longer be a part of… And when I was no longer invited to be a part of it, it was at Madison Square Garden…

The following day, after I was invited to not be a part of the tour anymore, I got a call from Taylor. I’d actually found out about it online, that I’d been replaced by this, I think she was 16, blonde haired, she had a song called Tim McGraw…

So she calls, and it actually was great. She called and she was like, hey, I hope there’s no – I guess I say ‘Bad Blood.'”

(I see what you did there, Chief).

Well Church realized that Swift was a much better fit for the tour than he was, so he wasn’t upset that she was replacing him. But he did have one request for her:

“She goes, ‘I love what you do, and I’m taking over.’… I said, ‘Listen Taylor, I have seen this crowd. This crowd is going to love you. I love what you do.

And I said it a little bit – I don’t know how fast I thought this would happen, but I said, ‘This is going to really be great for you, and you owe me your first gold record when this happens.'”

Well it didn’t take long for Taylor to get her first gold record – and true to her word, she gave it to Eric Church:

“Here’s what’s crazy, it took like seven days. 

So we were at a festival, we were on the same bill, probably not 30 days later, and she walks up on the bus. She had the first gold record of her career. She walks up and she inscribed it, ‘To Eric – Thanks for playing too long and too loud on the [Flatts] tour. Sincerely, Taylor.’

You could just tell then – artist. Just an artist.”

That gold record was presented to Taylor for selling 500,000 copies of her self-titled debut album Taylor Swift, which featured songs like “Tim McGraw,” “Picture To Burn,” “Teardrops On My Guitar,” and “Our Song.” The album has since been certified 7x Platinum for selling over 7 million copies.

But that first gold record, for the first half million albums that Taylor ever sold, is hanging in the Country Music Hall of Fame – after Taylor gave it to Eric Church.

@esquire #EricChurch is an OG #Swiftie. #taylorswift #rascalflatts ♬ original sound – Esquire

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