Colbie Caillat Walks Us Through Writing ‘Breathe’ With Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift and Colbie Caillat’s “Breathe” continues to be one of the highlights of the “Lucky” singer’s career.

The track from Swift’s 2008 album Fearless was a collaboration between Swift and Caillat, 39. The then-teenaged Swift seemingly used the same airy production of Caillat’s “Bubbly” as a reference point while recording her second LP. Eventually, Swift pulled Caillat in to work on the album and they wrote and recorded the song as a duet.

“I didn’t live in Nashville yet. I came out here to write and she wanted to write with me,” Caillat, 39, exclusively told Us Weekly at CMA Fest on Friday, June 7. “We just were in [the] Music Row area and we wrote this song. She brought this idea in.”

When the 14-time Grammy winner, now 34, re-recorded the LP in 2021, she enlisted Caillat for a remix of “Breathe.” Not only does Caillat still love the song’s lyrics and message, but she also has nothing but kind words to say about Swift herself.

“She’s just how she [seems]. She’s, like, warm and friendly,” Caillat recalled to Us of the writing session. “She brought a gift and her mom [Andrea Swift] drove her over and it was just so cool to be there at the beginning of it. And when we were being interviewed that day — ’cause someone came to interview us — I was watching her and I was like, ‘She’s just this mature woman, who is so intelligent and knows exactly what she wants.’”

While Caillat and Taylor’s careers have taken divergent paths since then, Caillat is thankful for the fans who have stuck along for the ride.

“I think what I’ve always been so grateful for with [social media] is that fans find you on their own,” she told Us on Friday. “Where before you’d have to find a label and they’d promote you and then hopefully people would hear you and [then it was] by MySpace or … YouTube and now TikTok, it’s all fans find it and then they become supportive and then they build your career. I find it that you have that connection with them from the beginning.”

Caillat performed for her fans at Friday’s 2024 CMA Fest during a solo set and alongside Brett Young. Before she took the stage, she walked Us through her pre-show rituals.

“[I] try to warm up, try to do a little stretching. Just so I, like, feel comfortable. I’m not doing anything crazy on stage, but you just wanna feel comfortable [and] good in your skin,” she said. “[I also] look over the set list, remember, things I wanna talk about and set list orders so the show runs smoothly.”

Even with a smooth show, Caillat can still get nervous “depending on the audience.”

“When it’s your fans, they know the songs [and] they’re excited, they’re singing along, then I open up [and] I have a really good time,” she gushed. “Then I’ll tell them stories on stage and I think today everyone’s just here to have a really good time.”

With reporting by Jeremy Parsons