Taylor swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for her narrative songwriting that often centers around her personal life, which has received widespread critical praise and media coverage. Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, Swift relocated to Nashville, Tennessee in 2004 to pursue a career in music. At age 14, she became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at age 15, she signed her first record deal. Her 2006 eponymous debut studio album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s on the Billboard 200. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's breakthrough second studio album, Fearless (2008), won four Grammy Awards and produced the pop-crossover hit singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me". It became the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States and was certified Diamond by the RIAA.
Swift's self-written third studio album, Speak Now (2010), spawned the Grammy-winning single "Mean", and her genre-bending fourth studio album, Red (2012), earned Swift her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together". Her fifth studio album and first all-pop project, 1989 (2014), produced the number-one singles "Shake It Off", "Blank Space" and "Bad Blood", and won three Grammy Awards—including Album of the Year—making Swift the first woman to succeed herself at the top spot on the Hot 100 and the first woman to win Album of the Year twice as lead artist. Her hip hop-influenced sixth studio album, Reputation (2017), made her the first and only act in music history to have four albums each sell one million copies in their first week in the U.S. and generated her fifth Hot 100 number-one single, "Look What You Made Me Do". Her seventh studio album, Lover (2019), broke the record for the most simultaneous Hot 100 entries by a female artist and became the global best-selling studio album of 2019. She announced her eighth studio album, Folklore (2020), the day before its release.
Having sold more than 50 million albums and 150 million singles globally, Swift is one of the world's best-selling music artists of all time. Her accolades include 10 Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and seven Guinness World Records; she is the most-awarded act and woman at the American Music Awards (29 wins) and Billboard Music Awards (23 wins), respectively. She has been included in multiple power rankings, such as Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world (2010, 2015 and 2019), Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time (2015), the Forbes Celebrity 100 (placing first in 2016 and 2019), and Billboard's Greatest of All Time Artists Chart (placing eighth). She was named Global Recording Artist of the Year twice by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (2014 and 2019), Woman of the Decade (2010s) by Billboard and the Artist of the Decade (2010s) by the American Music Awards.
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989,[4] in West Reading, Pennsylvania. Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, was a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch; her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift (née Finlay), was a homemaker who previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive. Swift, who said she has Scottish heritage, was named after the singer-songwriter James Taylor. Her younger brother, Austin Kingsley Swift, is an actor. Swift spent her early years on a Christmas tree farm that her father purchased from one of his clients. Swift identifies as Christian. She attended preschool and kindergarten at the Alvernia Montessori School, run by the Bernadine Franciscan sisters, before transferring to The Wyndcroft School. The family moved to a rented house in the suburban town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, where she attended Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School.
At age 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 weekends performing at local festivals and events. After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, Swift felt sure she needed to move to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in music. She traveled with her mother at age eleven to visit Nashville record labels and submitted demo tapes of Dolly Parton and Dixie Chicks karaoke covers. She was rejected, however, because "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 approximately 12 years old, computer repairman and local musician Ronnie Cremer taught her to play guitar. He helped with her first efforts as a songwriter, leading to her write "Lucky You". In 2003, Swift and her parents started working with New York-based talent manager Dan Dymtrow. With his help, Swift modeled 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 Merrill Lynch's Nashville office when she was 14 years old, and the family relocated to a lakefront house in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Swift attended Hendersonville High School but transferred to the Aaron Academy after two years, which could better accommodate her touring schedule through homeschooling; she graduated a year early.
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