About the American Pop-Singer – Taylor Swift

Born on 13^th December 1989 in Pennsylvania, Taylor Swift is an American country pop-singer, musician, actress and a songwriter. It was in the year 2006, that she released her debut single album called as “Tim McGraw” which earned her the self-titled debutant album and was also certified by the Recording Industry Association of America. Taylor Swift also has a Grammy Award to her credits apart from receiving a various other awards for being the best singer. Her third album is popular among all her albums and an estimation of 1,047,000 copies were sold just in the first week of its release.

Quick Facts:

• Nick name: T, Tay, Tayter Tot, Dong Foo
• Date of birth: 13^th December 1989
• Place of birth: Reading, Pennsylvania
• Origin: Wyomissing, Pennsylvania
• Profession: Songwriter, Actress, Country Pop-Singer
• Known for: Being a pop singer and her album Fearless which was released in the year 2008
• Website: http://www.taylorswift.com/

Childhood and growing up years:

Taylor Alison Swift most commonly known as Taylor Swift was born on 13^th December 1989 in Reading place which is located in Pennsylvania. Her mother Andrea Gardner was a homemaker who gave up the profession in finance and her father Scott Kingsley Swift was employed as a stockbroker. After her birth, the family moved on to Wyomissing which is located in Pennsylvania where she grew up on a Christmas-tree farm along with her younger brother Austin. Taylor Swift’s maternal grandmother was an opera singer known as Marjorie Finlay.

It was since her childhood days itself that Swift had a liking for writing. When she was in her fourth grade, she won a National Poetry Contest for a three-page poem, “Monster in My Closet”. When she was ten years old, a computer repairman taught her how to play the chords on a guitar and this incident sparked her interest in learning this instrument. Later she wrote her first song which was known as “Lucky You”. When Swift was twelve years old, she inclined her summer holidays in writing a three-fifty page novel which is still unpublished till date. During this time, she also started writing songs regularly and used this medium to vent her pain of being able to fit in a school because Swift was always a victim of ragging by her seniors and thus, she spent majority of her time in writing songs in order to express her emotions and feelings. Gradually, she started her musical career by performing in local festivals, karaoke nights and also fairs.

At the age of 14, Taylor’s Swift family relocated their house to Nashville, Tennessee where she gave her first major performance that was a grand success and was well-received by the people present at the Bloomsbury Fair. In Tennessee, Taylor Swift was enrolled in the Hendersonville High School but later she was homeschooled to complete her junior and senior school. In the year 2008, she acquired her high school diploma. Taylor Swift’s greatest influence was Shania Twain and her other influences include Tina Turner, LeAnn Rimes, Dolly Parton and not to forget her own grandmother. Although, her grandmother was an opera singer, Swift always laid her interest in country music. As a child she loved Patsy Cline.

It was at the age of eleven that Taylor made her first trip to Nashville and since then she regularly visited the place and to work with the local songwriters. However, after three years the family shifted to Tennessee. She came to Nashville hoping to sign a deal by distributing a demo copy of her karaoke songs. She gave her copies to a number of people in town but was rejected by everyone. When returned to Pennsylvania disappointed, she was given the chance to sign the national anthem at the U.S Open Tennis Tournament and this caught the attention of audiences and was given rendition. When she was 15 years of age, the RCA Records Company gave her the opportunity to keep her on an artist development deal but Swift rejected. It was her performance at Nashville in the Bluebird Café that caught the attention of Scott Borchetta who then signed her for his upcoming record label which was known as Big Machine Records. At the age of fourteen she became the youngest staff songwriter to be recruited by the ATV Tree also known as Sony Publishing House.

Claim to fame:

In the year 2006, Taylor Swift released her first debut album titles “Tim McGraw” which soon stood at the number sixth position by the Billboard magazine under Hot Country Songs category. Later in the year on 24^th October, she released her self-titled debutant album. No sooner than its release, 39,000 copies were sold in the first week and soon it took the No. 1 position in the Billboard Top Country Albums and was on the No.5 position in the top 200 Billboard songs. Taylor Swift’s debut album spent eight continuous weeks at the Top Country Albums charts and remained at this position for about 224 weeks out of 91 weeks. The music video of ‘Tim McGraw’ won Swift an award for being the Breakthrough Video of the Year in the year 2007 at the CMT Music Awards.

Taylor Swift’s second single “Teardrops on my Guitar” from the album Taylor Swift was released in the year 2007 on February 24^th and by the mid-2007 this song peaked on the No.2 of the Billboards Hot Country Songs chart once again. The song was also re-released in a pop remix version which was also a huge hit with her listeners. In the same year, Swift was given the Artist/Songwriter of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association making her the youngest artist to have received this award. Hey third song named “Our Song” spent atleast six weeks on the Country Charts. Later Taylor Swift also recorded a holiday album which was known as “Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection”. Her fourth successful single album was “Picture to Burn” which was also a great hit in the year 2008. By now she also started performing duets with the best selling rock band known as Def Leppard.

The same year saw the release of her second studio album, “Fearless” which was released in the United States on the 11^th of November. This album saw a sale of 592,304 which is the highest sales of any country artist in the year of 2008. This also marked the highest sales by a female artist in any genre of music. The lead single of this album, ‘Love Story’ became an all-time hit in both pop charts and country music. An approximate of 129,000 sales on this album was digitally sold just in the first week of its release. The music video of this song was based on Shakespeare characters of Romeo and Juliet and it was premiered on 7^th February 2009.

In the year 2009 in January, Taylor Swift announced her Fearless Tour to mark the success of her album. As part of this tour, she would be visit 38 states and 52 cities of North America and also provinces of Canada and United Stated with a span of six months. The tour was started on 23^rd April from Evansville in Indiana. In the following month, Taylor Swift also gave her first musical guest appearance in Saturday Night Live. On 8^th February 2009, Swift performed her own song “15” along with Miley Cyrus in the 51^st Grammy Awards. By the last week of same month, Taylor Swift’s song “Love Story” became the country’s song with the most number of paid downloads created in history. After the release of Fearless, she subsequently later releases another new song “Crazier” which is the soundtrack of a feature film titled Hannah Montana. On 28^th of April 2009, Swift agreed to give a free private concert to the students of Bishop Ireton High School which was a small Catholic school located in Alexandria in Virginia, after the school won a national “TXT 2 Win” contest through Verizon Wireless. Swift played for about an hour during the school’s field day which is an annual day with a long recess comprising of activities and games. In the same year on October 8^th, Swift’s official website made an announcement that her Fearless tour sold-shows would be extended by additional 37 days and Taylor Swift would be returning to North American.

When Taylor Swift was scheduled to perform on September 13^th 2009, she attended the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards to give her first VMA performance, where she became the first country music artist to be awarded with the prestigious MTV Video Music Award. As part of the proceedings of the show, when Swift was on stage to accept her award for the Best Female Video for her song “You Belong with Me”, singer-cum-rapper Kanye West came up to stage and took the microphone from Taylor Swift and said that Beyonce’s video of Single Ladies which was nominated for the same award, is one of the best videos of all time and this reportedly upsetted Swift that she left without completely her acceptance speech. Later when Beyonce won the award for the Best Video for her song Single Ladies, she called upon swift so that she could finish her acceptance speech and following this, West apologized for his verbal outburst by an entry in his blog which was later removed. West’s actions were criticized by a number of celebrities including the President Barack Obama. He later then made a public apology where it was accepted by Swift. Later in the year of 2010, Taylor Swift performed the song “Innocent” in the 2010 VMA Awards which marked the incident of West and his actions.

Taylor Swift still remains a favourite girl among a large chuck of audiences and she also made an acting debut in the year 2008 by starring in the Brad Paisley’s music video which was titled “Online”. In the same year, Taylor Swift also appeared in a film documentary which was made by MTV and was entitled as MTV’s Once Upon a Prom and also another documentary with Def Leppard which was premiered on the 7^th of November 2008. Swift also joined hands with Jonas Brothers to star in 3D concert film which was released in the year 2008.

Taylor Swift’s musical lyrics are highly autobiographical and are inspired from her relation with Joe Jonas. For example, the song ‘Hey Stephen’ was written about a boy with whom she toured in the past and the song “Fifteen” was about her freshman years of high school. The immense personal nature of the songs has drawn the attention of the music industry towards Swift and that is why she remains as one of the pop’s finest songwriters and also the country’s foremost pragmatist who is constantly in touch with her inner life when compared to most other adults.

In addition to the relationship that she shared with Joe Jonas that ended in October 2008, Swift also has other dating history that includes Taylor Lautner with whom she shared a three months relation and Jake Gyllenhaal with whom she spent from the late 2010 till the beginning of 2011. Reportedly, Swift has also been linked with John Mayer and it is speculated that the songs “The Story of Us” and “Dear John” from her album “Speak Now” are about John Mayer. In the year 2011, she made a statement that she does not like or have any boyfriend and in the same year she adopted a Scottish fold kitten whom she named her Meredith inspired by the character Meredith Grey from the popular Drama Grey’s Anatomy which is telecasted in ABC.

Presently:

Swift recently released her track “Today was a Fairytale” as a digital download available on iTunes on 19^th January 2010. This song features as a sound track from the movie Valentine’s Day, which also marks as her debut acting in a feature film. This song stood as the No. 2 position in the Billboard Hot 100 and became the sixth in the Top 10. Taylor Swift revealed that she has twenty-five songs for an untitled album to “Speak Now” which is set to release at the end of 2012.

Awards and Nominations Received:

Swift has a number of awards and nominations to her credits. She received four Grammy Awards in the year 2010 for her songs in “Fearless” and “White Horse” in the categories of Best Country Album, Best Country Song, and Album of the Year etc.

She won five awards of Academy of Country Music Awards for her albums “Taylor Swift” and Fearless” in the year 2008, 2009 and also 2011. She was also nominated a number of times for this award.

Taylor Swift has Ten American Music Awards to her success bag for her works “Herself”, “Fearless” and also “Speak Now”. Apart from this, she was also nominated twice but lost the chance.

Swift also won a number of Awards from the Billboard Music Awards, CMT Music Awards, MTV Music Awards and also Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards.

Trade Marks of Taylor Swift:

?  Princess Dresses or Long Gowns

?  Cowboy boots

?  Glittery guitars

?  Curly blonde hair

?  Lyrics of most of the songs are about her exes

Personal Quotes:

“To me, Fearless is not the absence of fear. It’s not being completely unafraid. To me, Fearless is having fears. Fearless is having doubts. To me, Fearless is living in spite of those things that scare you to death.”

“When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he’s everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he’s not easy to spot; he’s really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.”

“I suffer from girl next door it is where the guy is friends with you and that’s it.”

“Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you’ve had a bunch of bad days and there’s different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.”