Named for James Taylor, she rewrote the pop album economy
Taylor Alison Swift arrived on 13 December 1989 in West Reading, Pennsylvania, and grew into the highest-grossing live act and wealthiest woman in music. Diary-like writing plus constant reinvention turned a Big Machine country teen into a six-time IFPI global recording artist of the year.
Swift was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, on 13 December 1989. Her parents named her after James Taylor, choosing a unisex name they hoped would help in business; her father was a Merrill Lynch stockbroker, and her grandmother’s church singing is among her first musical memories. She spent Christmases on a tree farm and summers in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, where she sang at a coffee shop. A documentary about Faith Hill turned her from musical theatre toward country.
At 11 she toured Nashville labels with karaoke demos and was turned down everywhere, so she concentrated on writing. She learned guitar at 12 from a computer repairman, landed an RCA development deal at 13, and the family moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee, when her father transferred to Nashville. At 14 she became Sony/ATV’s youngest staff songwriter, writing with Liz Rose on Tuesday afternoons, and walked away from RCA rather than wait until 18 to release songs.
A November 2004 showcase at the Bluebird Cafe brought a deal with Scott Borchetta’s new Big Machine label, on condition she wrote her own albums. Her 2006 debut spent 157 weeks on the Billboard 200, the longest run of any 2000s album. Fearless topped the chart for eleven weeks, was 2009’s best-selling US album, and won the Album of the Year Grammy; no country song had led the Pop Songs chart before Love Story. She wrote Speak Now entirely alone, and it sold over a million copies in its first week in 2010.
After moving to Republic in 2018 she re-recorded four early albums following a dispute with Big Machine. Her Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour ever, and she holds 14 Grammys, including a record four for Album of the Year.
Source: Taylor Swift
