Taylor Swift

Singer and songwriter

• Born: December 13, 1989
• Place of Birth: Reading, Pennsylvania

Significance: After becoming interested in music at a young age, Taylor Swift got her start in country music. Since crossing over to pop, Swift has become one of the music industry's top recording artists.

Background

Taylor Alison Swift was born December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Her family later relocated to a nearby Christmas tree farm in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, where Swift's interest in music really started to take off. Her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was a professional opera singer, which sparked the young Swift's interest in music. Swift soon followed Finlay's example, performing at various local events, such as fairs and contests, by the time she was ten years old. At age eleven, she sang the national anthem at a Philadelphia 76ers game. By age twelve, Swift began writing her own songs and learning to play the guitar.

In pursuit of a career in the country music industry, Swift often visited Nashville, Tennessee. Seeing their daughter's dedication to her dream, Swift's parents moved the family to Hendersonville, Tennessee, near Nashville, when she was fourteen. A performance at the Bluebird Café in Nashville helped Swift land a contract with Big Machine Records. At the time, she became the youngest artist ever signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. Swift released her self-titled debut album in 2006 at the age of sixteen. Taylor Swift went on to sell more than 2.5 million copies. Her first single off the album, "Tim McGraw," became a top hit on the country charts. Swift went on to receive several awards for the album, including the Horizon Award from the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music Award for top new female vocalist in 2007.

Life's Work

Following the success of her debut album, Swift's second album, a holiday record released in 2007, fell a little flat in comparison. Her renditions of songs like "Santa Baby" and "Silent Night" on Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection became only modest hits on the country charts. Her subsequent albums, however, picked up on the success of her first album and started her transition into popular music. Swift released the album Fearless in 2008, which rose to the top of both the country and pop charts and stayed there for eleven weeks. That year, Swift also won the Academy of Country Music's Female Vocalist of the Year Award. By the end of the year, she had become the highest-selling country artist of 2008.

Fearless continued to win Swift accolades in 2009, including one for video of the year for the song "Love Story" at the CMT Music Awards. On September 13, 2009, Swift became the first country music star to win an MTV Video Music Award when she won for best female video. The win stirred controversy when a fellow musician, rapper Kanye West, jumped onto the stage during Swift's acceptance speech and stole the microphone from her while saying R&B singer Beyoncé should have won the award. West was removed from the show, but the stunned Swift was unable to make her acceptance speech. Later when Beyoncé accepted her award for best video of the year, she called Swift to the stage to finish her speech. West later apologized to the singer privately and publicly.

The awkward award moment made headlines, and Swift soon became an even hotter commodity than she already was, with tickets to her shows selling out within minutes. In 2010, she became the youngest artist to win the Grammy Award for album of the year for Fearless. Later that year, Swift released the album Speak Now, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, selling more than one million copies in its first week alone. The album featured such hit singles as "Mean" and "Sparks Fly." Following the success of that album, Swift released Red in 2012, which also sold more than one million copies in its first week. With the release of her album 1989 in 2014, Swift became the first woman in history to release three albums that sold more than one million copies in their opening week. 1989 was a complete departure from her country roots, taking on an entirely pop sound. The experiment worked though. In 2016, Swift won album of the year at the Grammy Awards for 1989. This marked the first time a woman had won album of the year twice. Swift's follow-up to the successful 1989, Reputation, was released in November of 2017.

Although Swift has won many awards and accolades, her career has not been without controversy. She is known for having feuds with several A-list celebrities, including fellow female singers such as Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, and Miley Cyrus. She has also been known to write songs about her famous former boyfriends, including Joe Jonas, Harry Styles, and John Mayer. Swift has had a long-running feud with Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian, over issues stemming from the infamous incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

In August 2017, Swift testified in court regarding an incident in 2013 at a radio station event. Swift accused DJ David Mueller of sexually assaulting her while taking a photo with him during the event. Mueller denied the allegations. Claiming the incident cost him his job, Mueller sued Swift, her mother, and a radio station employee in 2015. Swift countersued him for alleged assault and battery, seeking $1 in damages as a symbolic gesture. A jury ruled in her favor in 2017.

In 2018, Swift continued her success, breaking her own record for the highest-grossing US tour by a female artist. That October she won four honors at the American Music Awards (AMAs), including artist of the year. The victory gave her a total of twenty-three AMAs, surpassing Whitney Houston as the most decorated female artist in the history of the event. Around the same time, Swift broke her typical silence on political issues by urging her fans to vote in the 2018 midterm elections and announcing she would be supporting Democratic candidates in her adopted home state of Tennessee.

Swift released her seventh studio album, Lover, in 2019. The album featured an assortment of other artists, including Brendon Urie from the band Panic at the Disco!, on the single "Me!" and the Dixie Chicks on the song "Soon You'll Get Better." Other singles from the album included "You Need to Calm Down," which peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 list, and "Lover." In November 2019, Swift performed another song from the album, "The Man," at that year's AMAs. At the same ceremony, Swift was awarded Artist of the Decade.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Swift produced and released two albums while in quarantine—Folklore and Evermore. Both albums received widespread critical acclaim, and at the Grammy Awards in March 2021, Swift won album of the year for Folklore. She became the first woman in history to win that accolade three times. Evermore was likewise nominated for the same award at the Grammy Awards in 2022.

After her former music label, Big Machine—who owned all of the rights to her music, as is common in the industry—was purchased by music executive Scooter Braun, Swift announced that she would record all-new master recordings of her first six albums in an effort to regain control of her music and devalue the masters now owned by Braun, with whom Swift previously had altercations. Though Swift was not the first artist to create new master recordings, she was likely the most high-profile artist to follow through with that plan. In April 2021, she released a rerecording of her 2008 multiplatinum album, Fearless, including six previously unrecorded songs she wrote in her teens. The rerecorded album titled Fearless (Taylor's Version), became the first rerecorded album ever to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. She subsequently released a "Taylor's Version" of the album Red in 2021, which went on to win the top country album award at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards. Swift was also the recipient of several other awards at that ceremony, including top country artist.

In August 2022, Swift announced that her tenth studio album, titled Midnights, would be released later that year. The more subdued pop album was met with widespread praise when it was released in October. Swift endured controversy, however, later that year when ticket sales began for her Eras tour, which was her first tour since 2018. Organized through Ticketmaster, fans encountered extremely long waits during the presale, causing frustration and an inability to secure tickets among many fans. Ticketmaster then announced it would cancel its general public sale due to insufficient numbers of tickets, causing even more anger. While much of the backlash was directed toward Ticketmaster, Swift herself also received criticism for choosing to use a "dynamic pricing system" that contributed to the fiasco. Despite that controversy, Swift continued to dominate music charts during her Eras tour in 2023. In May of that year, she accomplished the unprecedented feat of occupying ten spots at once on the Billboard 200 chart. Furthermore, the Eras tour became a cultural sensation, with fans who scored the much-coveted tickets sharing footage of concerts on social media and reviewers raving about Swift's performances. By the end of 2023, the Eras tour became the highest-grossing tour in history, with an estimated $1.04 billion earned and 4.35 million tickets sold over the first sixty tour dates.

In July 2023, Swift released her third rerecorded album, Speak Now (Taylor's Version). Like her other rerecorded releases, it debuted in the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. She released her fourth rerecorded album, 1989 (Taylor's Version), in October 2023. That same month, Swift released a concert film of the Eras tour, which debuted in theaters before landing on the streaming service Disney+ in 2024. By January 2024, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert film of all time, with over $260 million earned in the global box office. It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 2024.

Swift made history at the 2024 Grammy Awards when Midnights earned the award for album of the year. She became the first artist in history to receive the award four times; she previously shared the title for most wins in the category with Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder. Midnights also earned the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album. Swift announced in her acceptance speech that she would release her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, on April 19, 2024.

The Tortured Poets Department debuted with immense commercial success and broke several records within days of its release. Swift surprised fans with a double album drop two hours after the initial release of Tortured Poets; the second installment, titled The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, includes fifteen additional songs for a combined total of thirty-one tracks. Upon the first five days of its debut, The Tortured Poets Department received over a billion streams on Spotify alone, making it the first album in the streaming service's history to achieve the feat. The album also sold an estimated 1.4 million copies in the US on its first day and over two million copies in the first week of its release. The Tortured Poets Department debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart and marked Swift's fourteenth number-one album of her career.

Impact

During her ascent up the music charts, Swift saw her financial value skyrocket. The musician has been at the top of several highest-paid celebrity lists, and she was worth an estimated $1.3 billion in 2024, entering Forbes' official list of billionaires for the first time. Further, she became the first person to earn that distinction based solely on songwriting and performing. She shared some of her fortune with others by contributing to charitable causes and groups. In 2013, she funded the $4-million Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, which aims to provide music education to children. After her court case in August 2017, Swift also began donating to charities for sexual assault victims.

Personal Life

Taylor Swift's parents are Scott Kingsley Swift and Andrea Gardner Swift. She has a younger brother named Austin Swift. In addition to her music, Swift has dabbled in acting, appearing in several movies and television shows. In 2023, she began dating professional football player Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Bibliography

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Bailey, Alyssa. "The Complete History of Everyone Who's Had Bad Blood with Taylor Swift." Elle, 9 May 2017, www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a37995/taylor-swift-anti-squad-members/. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.

Eells, Josh. "The Reinvention of Taylor Swift." Rolling Stone, 8 Sept. 2014, www.rollingstone.com/music/features/taylor-swift-1989-cover-story-20140908. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.

Espada, Mariah. "Taylor Swift Is Halfway Through Her Rerecording Project. It's Paid Off Big Time." Time, 10 Aug. 2023, time.com/6292599/taylor-swift-speak-now-rerecord-project/. Accessed 16 Aug. 2023.

Mark, Julian. "Taylor Swift's Ticketmaster Meltdown: What Happened? Who's to Blame?" The Washington Post, 18 Nov. 2022, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/11/18/ticketmaster-taylor-swift-faq/. Accessed 9 Dec. 2022.

Markowitz, Douglas. "2024 Grammys: Taylor Swift Makes Grammy History with Fourth Album of the Year Win for Midnights." Grammy Awards, 4 Feb. 2024, www.grammy.com/news/taylor-swift-album-of-the-year-2024-grammys-speech. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.

McIntyre, Hugh. "Taylor Swift Completely Dominates the Billboard 200 Once Again." Forbes, 16 May 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2023/05/16/taylor-swift-completely-dominates-the-billboard-200-once-again/. Accessed 16 May 2023.

Mercuri, Monica. "Taylor Swift Didn't Need Lucrative Side Hustles to Become a Billionaire." Forbes, 3 Apr. 2024, www.forbes.com/sites/monicamercuri/2024/04/02/taylor-swift-didnt-need-lucrative-side-hustles-to-become-a-billionaire/. Accessed 16 July 2024.

Puente, Maria. "Taylor Swift Starts Giving to Charities for Sex-Assault Victims after Trial Win." USA Today, 17 Aug. 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/life/2017/08/17/taylor-swift-starts-giving-charities-sex-assault-victims-after-trial-win/577048001/. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.

Sales, Nancy Jo, and Jessica Diehl. "Taylor Swift's Telltale Heart." Vanity Fair, Apr. 2013. www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/04/taylor-swift-cover-story. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.

Sisario, Ben. "Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Breaks Records with Blockbuster Debut." The New York Times, 29 Apr. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/arts/music/taylor-swifts-tortured-poets-department-billboard-chart.html. Accessed 1 May 2024.

Strauss, Matthew, and Evan Minsker. "Taylor Swift Responds to Scooter Braun Selling Her Masters, Confirms She's Re-Recording Her First Albums." Pitchfork, 16 Nov. 2020, pitchfork.com/news/scooter-braun-sells-taylor-swifts-masters-report/. Accessed 2 May 2022.

"Taylor Swift Wins Big at AMAs, Urges Fans to Vote." NBC News, 10 Oct. 2018, www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/awards/taylor-swift-wins-big-amas-urges-fans-vote-n918421. Accessed 8 Nov. 2018.