Taylor Swift

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. One of the most popular contemporary female recording artists, she is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which has received much media attention.
Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville, Tennessee, at age 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed with the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest artist ever signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. Her eponymous debut album in 2006 peaked at number five on Billboard 200 and spent the most weeks on the chart in the 2000s. The album's third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008. Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", Fearless became the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States. The album won four Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the youngest Album of the Year winner.
In 2009, Swift appeared in the late-night show Saturday Night Live followed by her film debut the following year in Valentine's Day. Swift was the sole writer of her 2010 album, Speak Now. It debuted at number one in the United States and the single "Mean" won two Grammy Awards. Her fourth album, Red (2012), yielded the successful singles "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and "I Knew You Were Trouble". With her fifth album, the pop-focused 1989 (2014), she became the first act to have three albums sell a million copies within one week in the United States. Its singles "Shake It Off", "Blank Space" and "Bad Blood" reached number one in the US, Australia and Canada. The album received three Grammy Awards, and Swift became the first woman and fifth person overall to win Album of the Year twice. The 2015 eponymous concert tour for 1989 became one of highest-grossing of all time.
As a songwriter, Swift has received awards from the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She is also the recipient of ten Grammy Awards, five Guinness World Records, one Emmy Award, 23 BillboardMusic Awards, 11 Country Music Association Awards, eight Academy of Country Music Awards, and one Brit Award. Swift is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums—including 27.1 million in the U.S.—and 130 million single downloads. She has appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world (2010 and 2015), Forbes' top-earning women in music (2011–2015), Forbes' 100 most powerful women (2015) and ForbesCelebrity 100 (2016). She was the youngest woman to be included in the third of these and ranked first in Celebrity 100.

Biography

1989–2003: Early life

Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the suburban Philadelphia area.Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, was a financial advisor, and her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift (née Finlay), was a homemaker who worked previously as a mutual fund marketing executive. She has a younger brother named Austin.Swift spent the early years of her life on a Christmas tree farm in Cumru Township, Pennsylvania. She attended preschool and kindergarten at the Alvernia Montessori School, run by Franciscan nuns, before transferring to the Wyndcroft School.The family then moved to a rented house in the suburban town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, where she attended Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School.
At the age of nine, Swift became interested in musical theater and performed in four Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions.She also traveled regularly to New York City for vocal and acting lessons.Swift later shifted her focus toward country music inspired by Shania Twain's songs, which made her "want to just run around the block four times and daydream about everything".She spent her weekends performing at local festivals and events.After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, Swift felt sure that she needed to go to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a music career. At the age of eleven, she traveled with her mother to visit Nashville record labels and submitted a demo tape of Dolly Parton and Dixie Chicks karaoke covers. However, she was rejected since "everyone in that town wanted to do what I wanted to do. So, I kept thinking to myself, I need to figure out a way to be different".
When Swift was about 12 years old, a computer repairman taught her how to play three chords on a guitar, leading to her first effort as a songwriter, "Lucky You".In 2003, Swift and her parents started working with New York-based music manager Dan Dymtrow. With his help, Swift modelled for Abercrombie & Fitch as part of their "Rising Stars" campaign, had an original song included on a Maybelline compilation CD, and attended meetings with major record labels. After performing original songs at an RCA Records showcase, Swift was given an artist development deal and began making frequent trips to Nashville with her mother.
To help Swift break into country music, her father transferred to the Nashville office of Merrill Lynch when she was 14, and the family relocated to a lakefront house in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Swift attended public high school, but after two years transferred to the Aaron Academy, which through homeschooling could accommodate her touring schedule, and she graduated a year early.

2004–2008: Career beginnings and Taylor Swift

In Nashville, Swift worked with experienced Music Row songwriters such as Troy Verges, Brett Beavers, Brett James, Mac McAnally, and The Warren Brothers. She eventually formed a lasting working relationship with Liz Rose. They began meeting for two-hour writing sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school. Rose thought that the sessions were "some of the easiest I've ever done. Basically, I was just her editor. She'd write about what happened in school that day. She had such a clear vision of what she was trying to say. And she'd come in with the most incredible hooks". Swift was signed by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house, but left RCA Records when she was 14. She later recalled: "I genuinely felt that I was running out of time. I wanted to capture these years of my life on an album while they still represented what I was going through".

Big Machine Records was still in its infancy on the release of the lead single, "Tim McGraw", in June 2006, and Swift and her mother helped "stuff the CD singles into envelopes to send to radio". She spent much of 2006 promoting Taylor Swift with a radio tour and television appearances. Borchetta has said that record industry peers disliked his signing of a 16-year-old singer-songwriter at first but that Swift tapped into a previously unknown market—teenage girls who listen to country music.Following "Tim McGraw", four more singles were released throughout 2007 and 2008: "Teardrops on My Guitar", "Our Song", "Picture to Burn" and "Should've Said No". All were highly successful on Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, with "Our Song" and "Should've Said No" both reaching number one. For the former, Swift became the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the chart. "Teardrops on My Guitar" became a moderate commercial success, reaching number thirteen on the Billboard Hot 100. Swift also released the holiday album Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection in October 2007 and the EP Beautiful Eyes in July 2008. She promoted her debut album extensively as the opening act for other artists on their tours.At an industry showcase at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe in 2005, Swift caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, a DreamWorks Records executive who was preparing to form his own independent record label, Big Machine Records. She became one of the first signings, and her father purchased a three percent stake in the fledgling company at an estimated cost of $120,000. The singer began working on her eponymous debut album shortly after signing the record deal. She persuaded Big Machine to hire her demo producer Nathan Chapman, with whom she felt she had the right "chemistry".Swift wrote three of the album's songs alone, and co-wrote the remaining eight with writers Rose, Robert Ellis Orrall, Brian Maher, and Angelo Petraglia.Taylor Swift was released on October 24, 2006. Jon Caramanica of The New York Timesdescribed it as "a small masterpiece of pop-minded country, both wide-eyed and cynical, held together by Ms. Swift's firm, pleading voice".Taylor Swift peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and spent 157 weeks on the chart, marking the longest stay by any release in the 2000s. As of August 2016 the album has sold over 7.75 million copies worldwide.
Swift won accolades for Taylor Swift. She was one of the recipients of the Nashville Songwriters Association's Songwriter/Artist of the Year in 2007, becoming the youngest person to be honored with the title. She also won the Country Music Association's Horizon Award for Best New Artist, the Academy of Country Music Awards' Top New Female Vocalist, and the American Music Awards' Favorite Country Female Artist honor. She was also nominated for Best New Artist at the 2008 Grammy Awards. In July of that year, Swift began a romance with Joe Jonas that ended three months later.