How Scott Borchetta Built Country’s Hottest Label

Speed Racer: Scott Borchetta, chief of Big Machine Records.

Scott Borchetta was a middle-schooler when he participated in his first car race, an amateur tilt at a Quarter Midget Association racetrack in Northridge, California.

Piloting his own quarter midget–a go-kart-esque vehicle with a full roll cage, the same type that NASCAR drivers like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart trained on–Borchetta fell just short of victory.

“I think I finished second or third,” he says over coffee on a recent trip to...