taylor swift biography pdf

Taylor Swift

Fourteen-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift made a splash in the country music world in 2006 and is now one of the biggest pop music stars.

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1989-present

Taylor Swift News: Pop Superstar Performs with Travis Kelce and Meets British Royalty in London

So much for “So Long, London.” As she continues her record-breaking Eras Tour, 34-year-old Taylor Swift made a major splash during her first stop in the British capital city.

After her June 21 concert, she met backstage with Prince William , Prince George , and Princess Charlotte , who watched the performance from a private box at Wembley Stadium. The royals were celebrating William’s 42 nd birthday, and the heir to the throne was seen dancing to “Shake It Off” at one point. Both Swift and the Prince of Wales shared photos of a group selfie on Instagram, with the Grammy winner writing “Happy Bday M8!” in her caption. Swift’s boyfriend, football player Travis Kelce , appeared in the photo she posted.

Two nights later, Kelce made a surprise appearance onstage , briefly performing and helping Swift with an outfit change before she sang “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” from her new album, The Tortured Poets Department . Kelce, wearing a tuxedo and top hat to match other backup dancers, carried her to a couch, danced a little, then powdered her face with a makeup brush as she stepped out of a dress and donned a coat with tails.

“I’m still cracking up/swooning over @killatrav’s Eras Tour debut 🥰,” Swift wrote on Instagram as part of a recap post about the weekend. “Never going to forget these shows. Can’t wait to do it 5 more times in August.”

Who Is Taylor Swift?

Quick facts, where is taylor swift from, music career, how many grammys does taylor swift have, what is taylor swift’s net worth, sexual assault trial and copyright lawsuits, scooter braun masters controversy and rerecording project, who has taylor swift dated, feud with kanye west, documentary and movies.

Musician Taylor Swift began earning renown as a country singer by the age of 16. Early hits like “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” appealed to country and pop fans alike and helped fuel the multiplatinum success of her albums, including the award-winning Fearless . Now a pop megastar with 14 Grammys, she is the first artist to win Album of the Year four times. Named Time ’s 2023 Person of the Year, Swift is currently performing on her record-breaking Eras Tour and is dating professional football player Travis Kelce . The “Shake It Off” and “Anti-Hero” singer released her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department , in April 2024.

FULL NAME: Taylor Alison Swift BORN: December 13, 1989 BIRTHPLACE: Reading, Pennsylvania ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius

Taylor Alison Swift was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1989. Swift spent her early years with her parents, Scott and Andrea, and brother, Austin, on the family’s Christmas tree farm in nearby Wyomissing. “I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head,” she told Rolling Stone . She learned to ride horses and competed, but a greater passion soon took root.

Swift followed in the musical footsteps of her grandmother Marjorie Finlay, a professional opera singer. By age 10, Swift sang at various local events, including fairs and contests. She sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game at age 11 and began learning guitar and writing her own songs at 12. (Her songwriting parallels the poetry of her distant cousin Emily Dickinson .) Her early music idols included Shania Twain and The Chicks.

To pursue her music career, Swift often visited Nashville, Tennessee, the country music capital. There, she co-wrote songs and tried to land a recording contract. Noting her dedication, her family moved to nearby Hendersonville when she was 13 in an attempt to further young Swift’s career. She attended Hendersonville High School before finishing her education through the homeschooling program of Aaron Academy, a private Christian school, once her musical career took off.

One of today’s biggest pop stars, Swift has worked her way from performing at local venues in Tennessee to commanding stadiums full of Swifties—her adoring fans—on international tours. A stellar performance at The Bluebird Café in Nashville helped her get a contract with Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Records at age 14.

She spent her early career as a country musician, and her first single, “ Tim McGraw ,” was named after one of the genre’s biggest stars. The 2006 song, which she wrote in her first-year math class, became a Top 10 hit on Billboard ’s country charts, quickly launching Swift into the spotlight. McGraw and fellow country music singer Faith Hill even brought Swift on their Soul2Soul tour the next year as an opening act. Reminiscing on the tour years later, McGraw told ET Canada , “Faith and I both knew that there was no stopping her. She’s a special talent.”

It wasn’t long before Swift began receiving critical praise for her work. The teenager won the Horizon Award from the Country Music Association (CMA) and the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Award for Top New Female Vocalist in 2007. The following year, she was nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys. She became the youngest artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year for Fearless in 2010.

The country music darling eventually began experimenting with genre. With her fifth album, 1989 , she decisively reintroduced herself as a pop musician. Her new sound excited fans, and the 2014 release is one of her most successful to date, spending 11 weeks atop the Billboard 200 and selling more than 1.2 million copies in its first week.

Not everything about her music changed, though. Personal experiences, including her romantic relationships, continue to fuel Swift’s songwriting. “I’m enthralled by relationships, and I love the drama in them, but that’s usually where it lives,” Swift told Rolling Stone in 2009, maintaining “I’m not a dramatic person.” Hardly the first musician to utilize this practice, the pop star usually doesn’t reveal who her song subjects. Instead, her loyal fans obsess over easter eggs in her lyrics and music videos to pinpoint a likely person.

Since March 2023, Swift has been performing on her headline-grabbing Eras Tour. It marks her sixth international tour, having first headlined her own concert series after releasing her sophomore album, Fearless . When presale tickets for the Eras Tour went live in November 2022, so many fans attempted to snag their seats that Ticketmaster canceled the general sale, leading to a congressional hearing about the debacle. Already one of the highest-grossing touring musicians as of July 2022, Swift has earned more than $1 billion on the Eras Tour , surpassing Elton John ’s record-setting farewell tour that spanned five years. The Eras Tour wraps in December 2024 after dozens more concerts, mostly abroad.

Swift’s successes in 2023 also include: the release of the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) album, the record-setting concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour , two more No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, tying with Drake as the artist with the most Billboard Music Awards in history, dethroning Bad Bunny as Spotify’s and Apple Music’s most streamed artist of the year, and achieving billionaire status. All that culminated in Time naming her its 2023 Person of the Year. Swift is the fifth woman to receive the honor.

Early in 2024, Swift became the first artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year four times, further cementing her place in the history books.

Swift has won 14 Grammy Awards out of 52 nominations.

She was first nominated in 2008 for Best New Artist. Although Amy Winehouse claimed the honor, 20-year-old Swift lived up to her promising career start by collecting four Grammys the following year. Fearless won Album of the Year and Best Country Album, and “White Horse” was named Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 2009.

Swift has now won Album of the Year four times: for Fearless , 1989 , folklore , and Midnights. She is the only artist to have accomplished this feat, setting the record in 2024. Midnights also won the award for Best Pop Vocal Album this year.

Even so, Swift has never won the top song honor of Song of the Year, though she has received a record seven nominations in the category. As for Best Country Song, the artist has won twice in five nominations; “Mean” earned the trophy the year after “White Horse” did.

The singer-songwriter has won many other accolades, including nine CMA Awards and eight ACM Awards. Both country music organizations have twice named her Entertainer of the Year. Since her first in 2009, Swift has taken home 23 Video Music Awards, second only to Beyoncé . Billboard called her Woman of the Year in 2012, one of Swift’s 39 awards from the publication. She is tied with Drake for as the artist with the most Billboard Music Awards trophies.

In December 2023, Swift notched another first when she received her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour . Her concert film competed in but didn’t win Cinematic and Box Office Achievement at the January 2024 ceremony.

Since her first single, “Tim McGraw,” in 2006, Swift’s music has found a home on the Billboard charts. As of June 24, 2024, she has had 263 songs grace the mainstream Hot 100. That includes 12 No. 1 hits and a record-setting 59 songs in the top 10; no woman has had more top 10 hits, and Swift only trails Drake among all artists. She also holds nine No. 1 Hot Country Songs, including “Our Song” and “Should’ve Said No.”

“Fearless” debuted at No. 9 on the mainstream chart in November 2008, marking Swift’s first top 10 song. Her first Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper was roughly four years away. That came in September 2012 with Grammy-nominated “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Her other No 1. songs include:

• “Shake It Off”
• “Blank Space”
• “Bad Blood”
• “Look What You Made Me Do”
• “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)”
• “Anti-Hero”
• “Cruel Summer”
• “Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]”
• “Fortnight”

At 10 minutes and 13 seconds, “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” is the longest No. 1 hit in history. “Shake It Off” is Swift’s only diamond-certified song, having sold the equivalent of 10 million copies.

To date, Swift has released 19 albums, including 11 original studio albums, four rereleases, and four live albums. Excluding those live recordings, every album since her sophomore effort, Fearless , has nabbed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 for at least one week. In December 2023, she became the first living artist to have five albums simultaneously rank among the chart’s top 10.

Her first album came in 2006 with Taylor Swift , and her newest album is 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department . Her latest rerecorded album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) , debuted in October 2023. Her albums, in order, are:

The young musician’s self-titled debut album was released in October 2006 when she was 16. Spurred on by the success of songs like “Tim McGraw,” “Teardrops on My Guitar,” and “Our Song,” it became a No. 1 country album in August 2007 and held the top spot for a total of 24 weeks. Indicating her future crossover success, the album also reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200. Taylor Swift has sold more than 7 million copies to date.

In November 2008, Swift released her next album, Fearless , which quickly hit the top of both the country and pop charts, marking her first No. 1 mainstream album. It maintained its apex ranking on the charts for weeks on end. By the end of the year, Swift had become 2008’s highest-selling country artist.

Now a Diamond-certified album, Fearless earned Swift her first Grammy Awards in January 2010. In addition to Best Country Album, it took home one of the night’s top honors with Album of the Year. The track “White Horse” won Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance, while “You Belong With Me” was nominated for three Grammys. Also named Album of the Year at the CMA and ACM Awards, Fearless featured the top 10 hits “Love Story,” “Fearless,” and “Change.” 

After skeptics doubted her involvement in her songwriting, Swift chose to write her next album alone. Speak Now came out in October 2010 and immediately found success. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold more than 1 million copies in its first week. Popular tracks included “Mine,” “Back To December,” “Speak Now,” and the Grammy-winning “Mean.” Swift was once again nominated for Best Country Album at the Grammys but didn’t win. 

Edging her way into pop music, Swift followed with Red , which featured her first No. 1 single “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and also topped 1 million in its first week of sales. The October 2012 release collected Grammy nominations for Album of the Year and Best Country Album. “I Knew You Were Trouble,” “Red,” and “Begin Again” were among its most popular songs.

With her next effort, Swift stepped outside her country music roots squarely into mainstream pop. She released 1989 in October 2014. It tied her record (set by Fearless ) for most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, produced three chart-topping singles, and moved more than 1.2 million copies in its first week. That made Swift the first artist to pass the 1 million mark in opening-week sales for three albums. She won her second Album of the Year award at the Grammys in February 2016 as well as Best Pop Vocal Album for her work.

In late August 2017, using an image of a snake, Swift revealed that she would release her sixth studio album, reputation , that November. Swift debuted the first single, “Look What You Made Me Do,” on August 24. In the music video, Swift played characters of all her misrepresentations. The video had more than 19 million views on YouTube within the first day.

Days before reputation ’s scheduled November 10 release, its secret tracklist was leaked to social media. Swift responded by posting the complete list to her Instagram page: 15 songs, including a collaborative effort with Ed Sheeran and rapper Future titled “End Game.” The two later appeared in the video for the track, which debuted in January 2018.

Reputation sold 1.05 million copies in the United States over its first four days. Along with giving the artist her fourth consecutive album to surpass 1 million in sales for its opening week, that total made reputation the top-selling album of 2017. Its success continued into 2018, surpassing 2 million in sales while generating the release of seven singles. By the end of the year, Grammy-nominated reputation had been honored with Favorite Pop/Rock Album at the American Music Awards and Top Selling Album at the Billboard Music Awards.

On April 26, 2019, Swift debuted “ME!” with Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco, along with a video of the duo singing and dancing amid a panoply of elaborate sets and swirling colors. It became the first single from her seventh studio album, Lover , with “You Need to Calm Down” and the title track also hitting the airwaves as singles over the next few months. The album was released in August.

In November, Swift claimed a whopping six wins at the American Music Awards, including Artist of the Year and Artist of the Decade honors. Swift also received her third consecutive Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album. A few weeks later, it was reported that Lover was the only album to sell 1 million copies in the U.S. in 2019.

Nearly four years later, Lover ’s “Cruel Summer” was promoted as her latest single amid her highly successful Eras tour. The song enjoyed renewed success, becoming Swift’s 10 th song to top the Billboard Hot 100.

On July 23, 2020, Swift announced on Instagram that she planned to release her eighth studio album, folklore . The 16-track album—made with Aaron Dessner of The National, Jack Antonoff of Bleachers, and Justin Vernon, better known as Bon Iver—debuted the next day at midnight. The alternative influence of her collaborators was apparent throughout.

Folklore produced the top 10 hits “The 1” and “Exile” featuring Bon Iver, plus went on to win Album of the Year at the 2021 Grammys. Swift also made history that year, becoming the only female solo artist to win that award three times.

Less than six months later, Swift dropped another surprise album to accompany folklore . She announced on December 10, 2020, that evermore would release at midnight the next day. “To put it plainly, we just couldn’t stop writing songs,” Swift wrote in a social media post . “In the past I’ve always treated albums as one-off eras and moved onto planning the next one after an album was released. There was something different with folklore. In making it, I felt less like I was departing and more like I was returning.” Evermore earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year, though unlike its sister album, it didn’t win.

Swift released her 10 th studio album, Midnights , at midnight on October 21, 2022. Three hours later, she released seven extra tracks in a deluxe version titled Midnights (3 am Edition) . The album broke new ground for the already prolific Swift, making her the first artist to have a song on all of the top 10 slots on the Billboard Hot 100. That included “Anti-Hero” at No. 1, “Snow On The Beach” featuring Lana Del Rey , “Lavender Haze,” and “Karma.” Actor Zoë Kravitz earned writing credits on the latter two songs, and Jack Antonoff played a heavy hand in the album’s creation, cowriting 11 of Midnights ’ 13 songs.

The Tortured Poets Department

At the 2024 Grammy Awards , Swift announced her next album, The Tortured Poets Department , would arrive on April 19, 2024. Fans were in for an even bigger surprise early that morning when the singer revealed it was a double album. The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology included 15 additional songs, bringing the total to 31 tracks.

Tortured Poets marks Swift’s 14 th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, tying Jay-Z’s record for most among solo artists. Only The Beatles have more, at 19. Within 12 hours of its release, Tortured Poets broke the single-day streaming record on Spotify before becoming the most streamed album across platforms in a single week in history. Fans in the United States streamed the collection more than 891.3 million times , according to data firm Luminate.

Taylor’s Version albums

After the master recordings to her first six studio albums were sold in 2019, Swift decided to rerecord her old music to regain artistic and financial control of her catalog. So far, she has released four of six: Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in April 2021, Red (Taylor’s Version) in November 2021,  Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) in July 2023, and  1989 (Taylor’s Version) in October 2023 . Each included previously unreleased songs labeled as “From The Vault,” some of which she recorded with fellow musicians Keith Urban , Ed Sheeran , Chris Stapleton , and Phoebe Bridgers, among others. 

Swift hasn’t shared when she will rerelease Taylor Swift and reputation .

When she was 26, Swift was the highest-paid musician—and celebrity of any industry—of 2016 per Forbes , earning $170 million. It was one successful year among many, allowing the pop star to amass a substantial net worth. By late October 2023, Swift had become a billionaire, according to Bloomberg .

As of June 24, 2024, Forbes estimates Swift has a net worth of $1.3 billion. The publication also reports she is the first person to become a billionaire primarily from songwriting and performing. In 2023, she earned an estimated $131 million on Spotify alone, as the platform’s worldwide top-streamed artist of the year.

Her wealth has skyrocketed in the past year and a half, fueled by the pop star’s highly successful Eras Tour. Pollstar reported in December 2023 that the ongoing tour has earned $1,039,263,762 , making Swift the first musician to gross over $1 billion on a single tour. The trade publication previously estimated the tour brings in $14 million in ticket sales each night.

Swift ranks No. 17 on Pollstar ’s list of highest-grossing touring artists since 1980, selling nearly $925 million in tickets from her first five tours and other appearances as of July 2022. The only women higher on the list are Madonna , Celine Dion , and Beyoncé .

Contributing to her overall net worth are her real estate holdings. According to Business Insider , her properties total $84 million. She also has lucrative endorsement deals with Capitol One, Stella McCartney, Diet Coke, Apple, and more.

Over the years, the musician has shared some of her fortune to help others. For example, in 2013, she funded the $4 million Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. The facility opened with three classrooms, a learning lab, and a space dedicated to exhibits for children. In an interview with CMT Hot 20 Countdown , she explained that “music education is really such an important part of my life. My life changed so completely when I discovered writing my own songs and playing guitar, and that can’t necessarily all be taught to you in school because there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

The megastar has been involved in a few legal disputes, which all have gone in her favor. In August 2017, she testified in a trial against David Mueller, a former radio DJ she accused of groping her four years earlier. Mueller denied Swift’s allegations and said the incident cost him his job, which led him to sue Swift, her mother, and a radio station employee in 2015. Swift countersued him for alleged assault and battery, and a jury ruled in her favor in 2017, awarding her $1 in damages as a symbolic gesture.

Swift responded to the verdict: “I acknowledge the privilege that I benefit from in life, in society, and in my ability to shoulder the enormous cost of defending myself in a trial like this. My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves.”

Also in 2017, Swift was on the receiving end of a lawsuit when two songwriters claimed that she stole the chorus of their song “Playas Gon’ Play” for her hit “Shake It Off.” Although a judge dismissed the case in early 2018 on the grounds that the “allegedly infringed lyrics are short phrases that lack the modicum of originality and creativity required for copyright protection,” an appeals court revived the suit in October 2019. Shortly before the trial was scheduled to begin, a judge dismissed the case in December 2022 at the request of both parties. A few media outlets reported a settlement, but if so, the terms weren’t publicly released.

The musician was trapped in another copyright lawsuit when a Mississippi woman claimed “a number of creative elements” from her self-published poetry book appeared in Swift’s companion book for her Lover (2019) album. The author sued in August 2022 but voluntarily dropped her case the next July.

In November 2018, Swift signed with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records. The deal granted the musician ownership of her master recordings, something she didn’t have in her agreement with her first label, Big Machine Records.

The next June, Swift revealed her dismay that Big Machine sold her catalog of music from her first six albums, up to reputation , to a company owned by Scooter Braun , the now-retired manager of artists like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande and a person she accused of bullying tactics. “Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,” she wrote on Tumblr . “Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.” Just before the August 2019 release of Lover , Swift confirmed she would rerecord her old music to regain artistic and financial control of her catalog.

Swift’s catalog was sold again, in October 2020, to Shamrock Holdings for around $300 million. In a lengthy post on Twitter (now called X), Swift gave her fans an update:

“As you know, for the past year, I’ve been actively trying to regain ownership of my master recordings. With that goal in mind, my team attempted to enter into negotiations with Scooter Braun. “Scooter’s team wanted me to sign an ironclad NDA stating I would never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive, before we could even look at the financial records of BMLG... I would have to sign a document that would silence me forever before I could even have a chance to bid on my own work. My legal team said that this is absolutely NOT normal, and they’ve never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off. He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me.”

Swift added the deal still allows Braun to profit from her music and that she was in the process of re-recording her old music. Her first rerecorded release, “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” came in mid-February 2021. So far, she has reissued four of six albums from her early catalog.

Watch Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood , a documentary about their feud, on Max

Currently, Swift is dating NFL football player Travis Kelce . On a July 2023 episode of his New Heights podcast , Kelce explained how he tried to give Swift his number on a friendship bracelet after attending the Eras Tour in Kansas City. Soon after, Swift reached out, and they went public with their romance in the fall. “Obviously, I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them... I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce told The Wall Street Journal . “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it.”

Swift attended 12 of his NFL games in the 2023 season and postseason. “By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple,” she told Time . “I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”

Kelce returned the support in mid-November 2023, traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to attend one of her concerts on the Eras Tour. During the show, Swift changed one of her lyrics in the song “Karma” to reference Kelce, and the couple were caught kissing on camera for the first time . At a June 2024 concert in London, Kelce briefly joined Swift on stage, helping her complete an outfit change between songs.

Over the years, Swift has dated several celebrities. During much of 2008, reports circulated that she was dating musician Joe Jonas of The Jonas Brothers. The song “Forever & Always” is reportedly about Jonas. The following year, Swift briefly dated actor Taylor Lautner , whom she met while they filmed the 2010 movie Valentine’s Day . Swift then dated fellow singer-songwriter John Mayer for a brief period beginning in late 2009; he’s thought to be the inspiration for her song “Dear John.”

From there, Swift was romantically linked to actors Cory Monteith and Jake Gyllenhaal in 2010, then Conor Kennedy—son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. —in 2012. She celebrated the new year with One Direction’s Harry Styles in 2013, but the relationship ended later that year. In 2015, Swift dated DJ and music producer Calvin Harris, though the couple reportedly broke up in June 2016. Shortly after that, the pop star began dating actor Tom Hiddleston , but the couple split three months later.

Swift’s longest relationship to date was with actor Joe Alwyn. The pair met at the 2016 Met Gala and were together from 2017 until spring 2023. Beyond being another boyfriend to spark her songwriting, Alwyn also helped write songs on her folklore , evermore , and Midnights albums under the pseudonym William Bowery. After their breakup, Swift briefly dated musician Matty Healy, lead singer of The 1975 band.

Beyond her romantic relationships, Swift has had many high-profile friendships—with singer and actor Selena Gomez , model Karlie Kloss , and actor Blake Lively , to name a few—as well as headline-making feuds. Chief among those is her beef with rapper Kanye West .

In 2009, when Swift won the MTV Video Music Award’s Best Female Video for “You Belong With Me,” West led to the stage as the young singer gave her acceptance speech. He took the mic and famously declared, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!”

The stunned Swift could not finish her acceptance speech, and West was removed from the show. When Beyoncé accepted her award for Best Video of the Year later in the night, she called Swift to the stage to finish her speech. West later apologized to Swift privately and publicly on The Jay Leno Show .

In early 2016, West released his song “Famous,” which includes a lyric taking credit for her fame and calling her a derogatory word. The rapper said Swift had approved the line in a phone call, though her team initially denied the conversation. Days later, Swift said in a Grammys acceptance speech:

“I wanna say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But if you just focus on the work, and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going, you’ll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who loved you who put you there. And that will be the greatest feeling in the world.”

Kim Kardashian , who was married to West then, defended her husband in a GQ interview that summer and released clips of the phone call between the musicians. Although edited, the recordings proved Swift’s PR team had been lying in their initial statement. Kardashian also implied Swift was a snake in a July 2016 social media post . The pop star alluded to the fight in the songs “Look What You Made Me Do” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” from her reputation (2017) album. She has also used snakes in music videos and onstage in concerts. The feud briefly reignited in March 2020 when a 25-minute video of the phone conversation leaked online.

Previously having released several concert movies, Swift made a bigger splash with her Netflix documentary Miss Americana . The January 2020 release covered the makings of her recent studio albums as well as other high-profile events like her sexual assault trial. Miss Americana earned a limited run in theaters simultaneously to its streaming release.

Swift’s newest concert movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour , capitalizes on her massive star power. The film opened exclusively in theaters—3,850 locations in North America alone—in October 2023. According to Comscore, no other concert movie enjoyed as wide of a release . It also had showtimes in some 90 other countries and grossed more than $261 million worldwide , making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time . Swift sweetened the show for at-home viewers with two extended versions. Disney+ subscribers can watch the Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) , featuring five additional songs. The movie is also available for rent on other streaming platforms with three additional songs.

Swift has also dabbled in acting. She appeared in the 2010 blockbuster Valentine’s Day alongside Julia Roberts , Jamie Foxx , Jessica Biel , Bradley Cooper , and other Hollywood heavyweights. A voice role in The Lorax (2012) and another role in The Giver (2014) followed. In December 2019, Swift was featured in a live-action adaptation of the famed Broadway musical Cats , along with Jennifer Hudson , James Corden , and Rebel Wilson . She also teamed with Cats creator Andrew Lloyd Webber to write a song, “Beautiful Ghosts,” for the movie. Swift also had a cameo in 2022’s Amsterdam .

• I have this really high priority on happiness and finding something to be happy about.
• Just be yourself. There is no one better.
• I’m not fast at running. I’m not fast at any kind of force. I’m fast at trivia games.
• The words you regret most are often the ones unsaid.
• I have to believe in fairytales, and I have to believe in love.
• Never believe anyone who says you don’t deserve what you want.
• Life isn’t about how to survive the storm. It’s about how to dance in the rain.
• You’re lucky enough to be different. Never change.
• I’ve learned when to get out. I’ve never wasted too much time with the wrong person, and that’s one thing I’m proud of.
• People haven’t always been there for me, but music has.
• To me, feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it’s just basically another word for equality.

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Taylor Swift Biography

Birthday: December 13 , 1989 ( Sagittarius )

Born In: West Reading, Pennsylvania, United States

Numerous Grammy Awards winner, singer-songwriter and country-pop star Taylor Swift is living every teenager’s dream. Born in a small town, she changed the way the current generation perceived country music. Being compared to the likes of legendary country artists such as Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson, Swift was only sixteen when she released her debut album. She is not only a great vocalist, but can also skilfully play instruments such as the guitar, piano and ukulele. She is the only female artist to have won two ‘Album of the Year’ awards at the Grammy’s. Her chart-busters like ‘Love Story’ and ‘You Belong with Me’ brought her global recognition. With the release of every album, she breaks her own record. She is an inspiration to several aspiring artists. Not only is she listed in the platinum-selling albums of all time, she also embodies compassion as she has extended unending support to several charitable organisations.

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Nick Name: Swifty, T-Swizzle

Also Known As: Taylor Alison Swift

Age: 34 Years , 34 Year Old Females

father: Scott Kingsley Swift

mother: Andrea Finlay

siblings: Austin Swift

Born Country: United States

Musicians Pop Singers

Height: 5'11" (180 cm ), 5'11" Females

Ancestry: German American, Italian American

U.S. State: Pennsylvania

Personality: ESFJ

You wanted to know

What is taylor swift's most popular album.

Taylor Swift's most popular album is "1989," released in 2014.

Which song by Taylor Swift has won the most awards?

The song "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift has won the most awards, including several Billboard Music Awards and MTV Video Music Awards.

Has Taylor Swift ever acted in movies?

Yes, Taylor Swift has appeared in several movies, including "Valentine's Day" and "The Giver."

What is Taylor Swift's signature fashion style?

Taylor Swift is known for her classic, feminine style with a touch of vintage flair. She often wears retro-inspired dresses and bold red lipstick.

Does Taylor Swift have any hidden talents?

In addition to her singing and songwriting skills, Taylor Swift is also known for her talent in playing the guitar and banjo.

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Taylor Alison Swift was born to Andrea Gardner Swift and Scott Kingsley Swift on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Her father was a stockbroker, while her mother was a homemaker who brought up Taylor and her younger brother, Austin.

Swift joined hands with several artists like John Mayer, Kellie Pickler etc releasing singles that continued to rock the music charts, including “Today is a Fairytale” a single of the ‘Valentine’s Day’ Soundtrack.

She made her first venture as an actor in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, where she played a rebellious teenager. She hosted ‘Saturday Night Live’- the only star to write her own monologue, and ‘Entertainment Weekly’. She made her film debut in the movie ‘Valentine’s Day’ in 2009.

In 2012, with her new album ‘Red’, Taylor Swift showed her fans and critics that she wasn’t simply a country artist. The album featured various genres such as dance-pop, heartland rock and dubstep tracks, which received great feedback.

After the release of critically acclaimed album ‘1989’, in 2014, she became the first female to have three consecutive albums sell over 1 million copies.

Her ‘1989 World tour’ grossed over 250 million dollars, which is her highest collection.

She soon became the ambassador of big brands such as Cover Girl, Sony Electronics, and Diet Coke. She soon became a brand in herself and launched her own line of perfumes.

In 2017, she released her sixth album, 'Reputation'. The album debuted at #1 on Billboard 200 and Taylor Swift became the first person to have four albums sell one million copies within one week in the U.S.

In 2019, she released her seventh studio album, 'Lover'. It sold more than 500,000 copies in one week in the U.S and was Taylor's sixth album to achieve this feat.

In 2020, Taylor Swift released two albums; 'Folklore' and 'Evermore'.

In 2021, at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, she won the 'Album of the Year' for her album 'Folklore' and became the first woman in history to win the award three times.

The gorgeous pop star has had several affairs with famous celebrities, and none have been hidden from spotlight. She first dated Joe Jonas of The Jonas Brothers in 2008, but the relationship ended with Joe falling for Camilla Belle.

Shortly afterward she dated Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, Jake Gyllenhall, Harry Styles and Calvin Harris. In 2016, she was spotted with Tom Hiddleston, but Taylor later announced that her relationship with Tom had ended. In 2016, she was romantically linked to Joe Alwyn , however, the couple parted ways in March 2023.

Taylor Swift holds the record for the most Billboard Music Awards won by a female artist, with a total of 39 awards.

She is known for sending personalized gifts to her fans, including handwritten notes and care packages.

Taylor Swift has a collection of vintage Polaroid cameras and often takes candid photos during her travels.

In addition to her music career, Taylor Swift is also an accomplished songwriter, having written all of her own songs on multiple albums.

She has a love for cats and is the proud owner of several feline companions, often sharing adorable photos and videos of them on social media.

See the events in life of Taylor Swift in Chronological Order

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Debut album and Fearless

Kanye west incident at the vmas, red , and 1989, reputation , lover , folklore , evermore , and controversies, midnights , the eras tour, and the tortured poets department.

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Taylor Swift

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Taylor Swift has been one of the most influential artists in contemporary music since she was named the best new artist by the Country Music Association in 2007. In 2023 she was named Spotify’s most-played artist, and in 2024 she became the only person ever to win the  Grammy Award for album of the year four times.

Where is Taylor Swift from?

Taylor Swift was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania. When she was 13, her parents sold their family farm in Pennsylvania and moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee, so she could pursue a career in country music in nearby Nashville.

In 2004, at age 14, Taylor Swift signed a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV, thereby becoming the youngest signing in the company’s history. In 2006 Swift signed with Big Machine Records and scored her first Top 40 hit with “Tim McGraw.” She then released four more singles and a self-titled album that quickly sold more than one million copies. In 2007 she was named best new artist by the Country Music Association.

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Taylor Swift (born December 13, 1989, West Reading , Pennsylvania, U.S.) is a multitalented singer-songwriter and global superstar who has captivated audiences with her heartfelt lyrics and catchy melodies, solidifying herself as one of the most influential artists in contemporary music. In 2024 she made history when she won the Grammy Award for album of the year for Midnights (2022), becoming the first artist to win in that category four times.

Swift showed an interest in music at an early age, and she progressed quickly from roles in children’s theater to her first appearance before a crowd of thousands. She was age 11 when she sang “ The Star-Spangled Banner ” before a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game, and the following year she picked up the guitar and began to write songs. Taking her inspiration from country music artists such as Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks ), Swift crafted original material that reflected her experiences of tween alienation. When she was 13, Swift’s parents sold their farm in Pennsylvania to move to Hendersonville, Tennessee , so she could devote more of her time to courting country labels in nearby Nashville .

Taylor Swift has been named Time ’s “Person of the Year” twice. Who appeared on the covers with her?

A development deal with RCA Records allowed Swift to make the acquaintance of recording-industry veterans, and in 2004, at age 14, she signed with Sony/ATV as a songwriter. At venues in the Nashville area, she performed many of the songs she had written, and it was at one such performance that she was noticed by record executive Scott Borchetta. Borchetta signed Swift to his fledgling Big Machine label, and her first single, “ Tim McGraw” (inspired by and prominently referencing a song by Swift’s favorite country artist ), was released in the summer of 2006.

The song was an immediate success, spending eight months on the Billboard country singles chart. Now age 16, Swift followed with a self-titled debut album, and she went on tour, opening for Rascal Flatts . Taylor Swift was certified platinum in 2007, having sold more than one million copies in the United States , and Swift continued a rigorous touring schedule, opening for artists such as George Strait , Kenny Chesney , Tim McGraw , and Faith Hill . That November Swift received the Horizon Award for best new artist from the Country Music Association (CMA), capping the year in which she emerged as country music’s most-visible young star.

On Swift’s second album, Fearless (2008), she demonstrated a refined pop sensibility, managing to court the mainstream pop audience without losing sight of her country roots. With sales of more than half a million copies in its first week, Fearless opened at number one on the Billboard 200 chart. It ultimately spent more time atop that chart than any other album released that decade. Singles such as “ You Belong with Me” and “Love Story” were popular in the digital market as well, the latter accounting for more than four million paid downloads.

In 2009 Swift embarked on her first tour as a headliner, playing to sold-out venues across North America . That year also saw Swift dominate the industry award circuit. Fearless was recognized as album of the year by the Academy of Country Music in April, and she topped the best female video category for “You Belong with Me” at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in September. During her VMA acceptance speech, Swift was interrupted by rapper Kanye West , who protested that the award should have gone to Beyoncé for what he called “one of the best videos of all time.” Later in the program, when Beyoncé was accepting the award for video of the year, she invited Swift onstage to conclude her speech, a move that drew a standing ovation for both performers. At the CMA Awards that November, Swift won all four categories in which she was nominated. Her recognition as CMA entertainer of the year made her the youngest-ever winner of that award, as well as the first female solo artist to win since 1999. She began 2010 with an impressive showing at the Grammy Awards , where she collected four honors, including best country song, best country album, and the top prize of album of the year.

Later that year Swift made her feature-film debut in the romantic comedy Valentine’s Day and was named the new spokesperson for CoverGirl cosmetics. Although Swift avoided discussing her personal life in interviews, she was surprisingly frank in her music. Her third album, Speak Now (2010), was littered with allusions to romantic relationships with John Mayer , Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers , and Twilight series actor Taylor Lautner. Swift reclaimed the CMA entertainer of the year award in 2011, and the following year she won Grammys for best country solo performance and best country song for “ Mean,” a single from Speak Now .

Swift continued her acting career with a voice role in the animated Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (2012) before releasing her next collection of songs, Red (2012). While she remained focused on the vagaries of young love, her songwriting reflected a deepened perspective on the subject, and much of the album embraced a bold pop-rock sound. In its first week on sale in the United States, Red sold 1.2 million copies—the highest one-week total in 10 years. In addition, its lead single, the gleeful “ We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” gave Swift her first number-one hit on the Billboard pop singles chart.

In 2014 Swift released 1989 , an album titled after the year of her birth and reportedly inspired by the music of that era. Although Swift had already been steadily moving away from the traditional country signifiers that marked her early work—“I Knew You Were Trouble,” the second single from Red , even flirted with electronic dance music —she called 1989 her first “official pop album.” On the strength of the upbeat “ Shake It Off,” the album proved to be another blockbuster for Swift, its first-week sales surpassing those of Red . It went on to sell more than five million copies in the United States and earned Swift her second Grammy for album of the year. In 2014 Swift also appeared in a supporting role in The Giver , a film adaptation of Lois Lowry ’s dystopian novel for young readers.

In 2016 Swift’s feud with Kanye West resumed after he released the single “Famous.” The song included a lyric in which Swift was referred to as a “bitch,” and she alleged that it was misogynistic. The public spat escalated after West’s wife, Kim Kardashian , released a recording of a phone call in which Swift gave her approval for the line, though West made no mention of calling her a bitch. Swift’s controversies continued as she took part in a widely publicized civil trial in August 2017, after former radio host David Mueller sued the singer, her mother, and a promoter, claiming that Swift had falsely accused him of sexually groping her in 2013 during the taking of a photograph and thus destroyed his career. She countersued, maintaining that the assault had taken place. At the trial, Swift was removed from Mueller’s suit and the other two defendants were found not liable as the jury found in favor of Swift’s countersuit. Shortly thereafter Swift released the hit song “ Look What You Made Me Do,” and her album Reputation became the top-selling American LP of 2017.

In 2018 Swift left Big Machine and signed with Republic Records and Universal Music Group. The following year her former label, which owned the master recordings of her six albums, was sold to Scooter Braun, a talent manager whose clients had included Kanye West. Swift publicly spoke out against the deal, claiming that Borchetta had rejected her attempts to acquire the master tapes and that Braun had bullied her over the years. She subsequently tried to negotiate a deal with Braun, but he sold her back catalog to a private investment firm in 2020. Against this backdrop , Swift began rerecording her early material in an effort to gain control of it—the hope being that her remade songs and not the originals would be sought out for licensing deals—and in 2021 Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) appeared. They were remakes of earlier albums with several previously unreleased tracks. In July 2023 Swift released Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) , followed by 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in October that same year.

In 2019 Swift released her seventh album, Lover , which she described as “a love letter to love itself.” That year she also appeared in the musical Cats , a film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber ’s hugely successful stage production. Miss Americana (2020) is a documentary about her life and career. With little advance notice, she released Folklore in 2020. A departure from her previous pop-inspired work, Swift’s eighth studio album drew praise for its introspection and restraint, and it won the Grammy for album of the year. The “sister record,” Evermore , appeared later in 2020.

Swift adopted a synth-pop sound for the candid Midnights (2022), which she described as “the story of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” The album received six Grammy nominations, scoring wins for album of the year and best pop vocal album.

March 2023 marked the start of Swift’s first concert tour since 2018, her sixth tour overall. When ticket sales for the Eras Tour opened on Ticketmaster in November 2022, many fans were disappointed by technical issues and waits that lasted up to multiple days. After two rounds of presales, general sales were canceled due to unprecedented demand. Swift expressed disappointment about the situation but did not mention Ticketmaster in her response.

In December 2023, Swift was honored as Time magazine ’s “Person of the Year.” Finalists also included Barbie , Vladimir Putin , and Sam Altman . The honor came shortly after the music streaming platform Spotify deemed her its most-played artist. According to a Bloomberg analysis, Swift is now a billionaire, with a net worth of around $1.1 billion. On a Forbes list of the most powerful women of 2023, Swift placed fifth. She has been dating American football player Travis Kelce since October 2023. In February 2024, while accepting one of her awards during the Grammy Awards telecast, Swift announced that she would be releasing her next studio album, The Tortured Poets Department , in April. The album was released as a double LP, the 15-track second part dubbed The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology . Guest artists include Post Malone on the single “Fortnight” and Florence Welch on the track “Florida!!!”

LIFE AND CAREER

    Taylor Alison Swift is a singer-songwriter born on December 13, 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania. Her father, Scott Swift, is a stockbroker; her mother, Andrea Swift, is a homemaker who previously worked as a fund marketing executive; and her brother, Austin, is an actor. Swift spent her early years on a Christmas tree farm with her parents.    At age 9, Swift started taking vocal and acting lessons in New York City and later decided to shift her focus toward country music, inspired by Shania Twain and Faith Hill.    When the rising star was around 12 years old, a computer repairman named Ronnie Cremer taught her to play guitar and helped with her first efforts as a songwriter, leading Taylor to write "Lucky You", her first song ever.     In 2003, with the help of a family friend manager, she modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch and had an original song included on the show's compilation CD. With it, came the opportunity to attend meetings with major record labels.     To help Taylor's break into country music, her father transferred his job to an office in Nashville when she was 14, and the family relocated to a lakefront house in Hendersonville, Tennessee, where Taylor attended high school. Two years later, she transferred to Aaron Academy to better accommodate her touring schedule through homeschooling. She graduated high school a year early because of that.

Career Beginnings

  In Nashville, Taylor started working with songwriter Liz Rose during two-hour writing sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school. Later, she became the youngest artist signed by Sony/ATV publishing house, but left the group at age 14. She believed she was running out of time because she wanted to capture the early years of her life on an album while it still represented what she was going through.     At a showcase in Nashville's Bluebird Cafe in 2005, Swift caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, a record executive who was preparing to form an independent record label, Big Machine Records. She became one of Big Machine's first signings, with her father purchasing a three percent share of the company.     Taylor then started working on her debut album and persuaded Big Machine to hire Nathan Chapman to produce her songs. Her first lead single “Tim McGraw” was released in June 2006, and Taylor Swift’s self titled album was released later that year, on October 24, 2006. It peaked at number 5 on the US Billboard 200, where it spent 275 weeks. Swift was also the opening act for Brad Paisley’s 2007 tour to promote her album and spent 2006 and 2007 doing promotion on radios, television, and being the opening act for country artists in the US. Throughout 2007 and 2008, Taylor released four more singles from her debut album and all of them appeared on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart.    Swift released her first two EPs "The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection" and "Beautiful Eyes" in October 2007 and July 2008, respectively, winning accolades for all of her first three projects.     She became the youngest person to be honored with the BMI Songwriter of the Year title in 2007. She won awards at the CMAs, ACMs and AMAs while also securing a nomination for Best New Artist at the 50th Grammy Awards.

  Swift's sophomore album, Fearless, was released on November 11, 2008. Five singles were released throughout 2008 and 2009, with "Love Story", the lead single, peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100  chart and number 1 in Australia. The second single, "You Belong With Me", peaked at number 2 in the US. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was the top selling album of 2009 in the US.     The Fearless Tour – Swift's first headlining concert tour – grossed over $63 million, with Taylor releasing a documentary of the tour that was aired on television and released on DVD. Throughout 2009 and 2010, Swift won multiple awards with her LP at prestigious award shows such as the CMAs and the ACMs, including Artist of the Year at the AMAs and her first Album of the Year statue at the 52nd Grammys, where Swift also bagged another 3 wins. She was named 'Female Artist of the Year' by Billboard back in 2009 as well.     Taylor also co-wrote songs with artists such as John Mayer, Boys Like Girls, and Kellie Pickler, and wrote 2 tracks for Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana – "Crazier" and "You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home" – which were featured on the movie’s soundtrack.     During Fearless era, Taylor also wrote “Today Was A Fairytale” for the Valentine's Day movie Soundtrack, which peaked at number 2 in the US.

   In August 2010, Swift released "Mine”, the lead single from her third studio album, Speak Now. It debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart at number three. Following criticism claiming Taylor’s songwriting was good because she worked with co-writers, Swift wrote all 17 tracks on her third record by herself as well as co-produced every song.     The album was released on October 25, 2010, debuting at number 1 on Billboard 200, with 1 million copies sold in its first week.     At the 54th Grammy Awards, in 2012, Swift won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance for "Mean", which she performed during the ceremony in response to her much criticized 2010 Grammy performance, serving as a testament to her abilities as a musician.    Swift won several awards for Speak Now, including Songwriter of the Year at the BMI Awards, Entertainer of the Year at the ACMs and CMAs, and was named Billboard’s Woman of the Year. The album also received general acclaim from critics, with Rolling Stone praising Taylor abilities as a rockstar.     The Speak Now World Tour was done between 2011 and 2012, grossing over $123 million. In November 2011, she released a live album, the “Speak Now World Tour Live".     Swift also contributed to The Hunger Games soundtrack with two original songs: “Eyes Open” and “Safe & Sound”, recorded with The Civil Wars. The latter went on to win a Grammy award as well as a Golden Globe nomination. Taylor was featured on BoB's single "Both of Us”, released in May 2012. 

   In August 2012, Swift released "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", the lead single from her fourth studio album, RED. It became her first number one in the US and New Zealand, and reached the top spot on iTunes digital song sales chart only 50 minutes after its release. Her third single, "I Knew You Were Trouble”, peaked in the top 5 of the most important music market countries in the world, reaching the 2nd position on Billboard Hot 100.     RED was released on October 22, 2012. For this project, Taylor worked with new producers and songwriters, such as Max Martin and Shellback – who would become two of Taylor’s biggest collaborators in the future – as well as Nathan Chapman and Liz Rose, with whom she’d been working since her earlier days. The album incorporates new genres for Swift, like heartland rock, dubstep and dance pop influences.     RED debuted at number 1 in the US, with a first week sale of 1.2 million copies, and was Swift's first number 1 album in the UK. The Red Tour ran from March 2013 to June 2014 and grossed over $150 million, becoming the highest grossing country tour when it wrapped.     Red earned Swift several accolades, including 4 Grammy nominations, a VMA trophy, multiple AMA statues and a BMI award for Songwriter of the Year. Taylor was also honored by the Country Music Academy with the Pinnacle Award.     In 2013, Taylor recorded "Sweeter than Fiction" for the One Chance movie soundtrack. It became her first project with producer Jack Antonoff, who she would continue to work with in the future. Taylor also collaborated with Tim McGraw and Keith Urban in one of the most successful country songs of that year, “Highway Don’t Care”.  

    In March of 2014, Taylor moved to New York City while she worked on her fifth studio album, 1989, which would become her most successful and longest-charting record. Influenced by 1980s synth-pop, Swift severed ties with the country sound of her previous albums, and marketed 1989 as her "first documented, official pop album". The album was released on October 27, 2014 and sold 1.28 million copies in the US during the first week of release, debuting at the top of Billboard 200 chart.    Three of its singles – “Shake It Off", "Blank Space", and "Bad Blood”, featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar – reached number one in Australia, Canada, and in the US.     The 1989 World Tour ran from May to December 2015 and was the highest-grossing tour of the year, with $250 million in total revenue.     During this era, Taylor went up against two of the biggest steaming services in the world, Spotify and Apple Music, in an effort to oppose the way these companies payed artists. In November 2014, Swift removed her entire catalog from Spotify, arguing that the streaming company’s ad-supported free service undermined the premium service, which provides higher royalties for songwriters. In June of 2015, Taylor wrote an open letter criticizing Apple Music for not offering royalties to artists during the streaming service's three-month free trial period. The following day, Apple announced that it would pay artists during the free trial period.     Swift was named Billboard's Woman of the Year in 2014, and at the 2014 American Music Awards, she received the inaugural Dick Clark Award for Excellence. During this era, Swift also won a BRIT, several VMAs, and multiple other accolades which solidified the 1989 era as the most awarded pop era of all time.     At the 58th Grammy Awards in 2016, 1989 won in 3 categories, including Album of the Year. Swift became the first woman and fifth act overall to win Album of the Year twice as a lead artist.     Swift co-wrote "This Is What You Came For" with Calvin Harris in 2016, and early in 2017, she collaborated with Zayn Malik on “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”, for the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack. The song reached number two in the US and won Best Collaboration at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards.    "Better Man”, a song Taylor had written during Red era, was released on Little Big Town's seventh album, The Breaker, and earned Swift an award for Song of the Year at the 51st CMA Awards in 2017.

   After disappearing from social media and the public eye during most of 2016, Swift executed one of the most successful comebacks in history with her sixth studio album, reputation. “Look What You Made Me Do” was released as the albums’s lead single and its music video broke the record for the most views in the first 24 hours of release.    The album was released on November 10, 2017 and incorporated a heavy electropop sound, with hip hop, R&B and EDM influences. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 1.21 million copies. With this achievement, Swift became the first act to have four albums sell one million copies within one week in the US. The project spawned three other international singles, including the US top-five entry "...Ready for It?".     In support of reputation, she embarked on her reputation Stadium Tour, which ran from May to November 2018. In the US, the tour grossed $266.1 million in box office and sold over two million tickets, breaking Swift's own record for the highest-grossing US tour by a woman, which was previously held by her 1989 World Tour ($181.5 million). It also became the highest-grossing North American concert tour in history. Worldwide, the tour grossed $345.7 million. On December 31st, Swift released the reputation Stadium Tour concert film on Netflix.     Reputation was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 61st Grammy Awards in 2019. At the 2018 AMAs, Swift won four awards, including Artist of the Year and Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist. After the 2018 ceremony, Swift garnered a total of 23 awards, becoming the most awarded female musician in AMA history.

    In November 2018, Taylor signed a new multi-album deal with Universal Music Group and her subsequent releases would be promoted under the Republic Records imprint. The contract included a provision for her to maintain ownership of her masters recordings. Her seventh album would become the first studio album owned by Swift.    Lover was released on August 23, 2019 and became Taylor’s sixth consecutive album to sell over 500,000 copies in its first week in the US, making Swift the first female artist to achieve this. All 18 songs from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in the same week, setting a record for the most simultaneous entries by a woman. Lover was the world's best-selling solo studio album of 2019, selling 3.2 million copies.     The album earned multiple accolades, including 3 nominations at the Grammys, 3 VMAs and 6 AMAs. Swift also became the first female artist to win Artist of the Decade at the American Music Awards.    Taylor starred as Bombalurina in the movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, Cats. She co-wrote and recorded an original song for the movie called "Beautiful Ghosts”, which would earn her another Golden Globe nod & a Grammy nomination at the 63rd Annual GRAMMY Awards.    The documentary 'Miss Americana', which chronicles part of her life and career over the years, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released on Netflix in January 2020. Miss Americana features the original song "Only the Young", which Swift wrote after the 2018 United States presidential elections.     During promotion for Lover in 2019, Swift became embroiled in a publicized dispute with manager Scooter Braun and her former label Big Machine regarding the acquisition of the masters of her back catalog. She stated she had been trying to buy the masters for years, but Big Machine only allowed her to do so if she exchanged a new album for an older one under another contract, which she chose not to sign. In October 2019, Swift's masters, videos and artworks were sold to Shamrock Holdings for a reported $300 million. Swift began re-recording her back catalog in November 2020 in an effort to own and be in control of her music and life’s work.

folklore, evermore and re-recordings

     On July 23, 2020, Swift surprise-announced she would be releasing her eighth studio album, folklore, at midnight. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and became the year's longest-running no. 1, with 8 non-consecutive weeks at the top of the chart. The album’s lead single “cardigan” also debuted at #1.     Made in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, folklore was the result of a collaboration with long-time musical partner Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner, from The National, with whom Taylor had never worked before, and Bon Iver who are featured in one of the album’s tracks.    In November 2020, Swift released the self-directed “folklore: the long pond studio sessions” on Disney+, a documentary in which Taylor, Aaron and Jack perform all the songs from the record while discussing the meanings and inspirations behind the album.    Folklore earned Swift 5 nominations at the Grammys, including Album and Song of the Year. Taylor won the Album of the Year statue, becoming the first woman to win the Grammy’s highest honor three times.    On December 10, 2020, Swift once again surprised her fans with the announcement of her ninth studio album and folklore’s sister record, evermore. The album was released on the 11th and continued Taylor’s collaborations with Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff and Bon Iver, as well as incorporated new artists into the “folkmore universe”, such as HAIM and The National. Both evermore and its lead single “willow” debuted atop of the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 charts. Having both sister albums achieve this feature, Swift became the first artist to debut at the top of both the singles and albums charts simultaneously twice.    Folklore and Evermore embrace an indie folk and alternative rock production, a departure from Swift’s previous upbeat pop releases. Both albums sold over one million units worldwide in its first week and folklore broke the record for first-day album streams by a female artist on Spotify.     Taylor began working on the re-recordings of her first 6 studio albums in November of last year. The first release from this effort to own her catalog was the re-recording of her sophomore album Fearless, now Fearless (Taylor’s Version). It was released on April 9, 2021 and included 6 never before heard songs that didn’t make it into the album originally, besides the 20 tracks that had already been released in 2008 and 2009. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 200, becoming Swift’s 9th consecutive album and the first re-recorded album in history to do so.     Taylor announced she will be releasing the re-recording of her 4th studio album, RED, on November 19, 2021.

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Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography Hardcover – Picture Book, May 2, 2023

• Part of series Little Golden Book
• Print length 24 pages
• Language English
• Grade level Preschool - 3
• Dimensions 6.63 x 0.21 x 8.06 inches
• Publisher Golden Books
• Publication date May 2, 2023
• ISBN-10 0593566718
• ISBN-13 978-0593566718
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Golden Books (May 2, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 24 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593566718
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593566718
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 5+ years, from customers
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ Preschool - 3
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.99 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.63 x 0.21 x 8.06 inches
• #1 in Children's Musical Biographies (Books)
• #1 in Children's Popular Music
• #1 in Children's Women Biographies (Books)

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About the authors

Wendy loggia.

Wendy Loggia is the #1 Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of many books, including the holiday romance ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS, and the #1 bestselling TAYLOR SWIFT: A Little Golden Book. Her books have been published in multiple languages. Her newest book is HARRY STYLES: A Little Golden Book. Follow her on Instagram at @authorwendyloggia.

Elisa Chavarri

Elisa Chavarri is an illustrator originally from Lima, Peru. She did much of her growing up in Northern Michigan where she now resides with her husband and two young children.

www.elisachavarri.com

Customer reviews

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Customers say

Customers find the book great for young and old looking to learn a little about Taylor Swift. They also say it's easy to read but still enjoyable. Readers describe the storyline as captivating and enchanting. They say the content is informative, accurate, and sweet.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book great for young and old looking to learn a little about Taylor Swift. They also say it's fun, positive, and perfect for family members who are Swiftie fans.

"...perseverance, and self-expression makes this biography not only entertaining but also educational, instilling important values in young..." Read more

"...Taylor’s journey in a way that’s both inspiring and accessible for young readers . It’s a must-have for any little Swiftie in the making!" Read more

"Nice story with a good lesson for young Swifties ." Read more

"Short inspiring story of Taylor Swift. Perfect for young Swifties . Gave it to a swifty and she loved it." Read more

Customers find the gift books a very sweet idea and a perfect little collector's item.

"...but easy to read if it were for a smaller child but a great collectible gift idea for older ones...." Read more

"This makes the perfect gift for the little Swiftie in your life!" Read more

"...So if you have someone who is a Swiftie this gift is so cute ." Read more

"...It would also make a lovely gift . My kids and I couldn't be happier with this purchase, and we highly recommend it...." Read more

Customers find the book easy to read but still enjoyable. They say the illustrations and writing are great, and the language is easy for kids to understand. Readers also mention that the story is abbreviated and easy to follow for younger kids, and provides a simple overview of Taylor's life and career.

"...Through simple yet engaging language , young readers are introduced to the empowering message of following their dreams and embracing their unique..." Read more

"...They are informative but easy to read if it were for a smaller child but a great collectible gift idea for older ones...." Read more

"It was very sweet .. easy reading for young person ." Read more

" Great and easy read for children and Swifty people everywhere!..." Read more

Customers find the storyline captivating, enchanting, and entertaining. They also say it's a nice short biography of Taylor's youth and start in show business.

"...One of the standout features of this book is its ability to distill Taylor Swift's remarkable story into a format that is perfect for young readers...." Read more

"... Great little story lines but I don’t care for a lot of the other people they have written about but there are a few I felt were worth getting...." Read more

"...The vibrant illustrations and simple storytelling keep her engaged , and she’s already asking to read it again and again...." Read more

" Nice story with a good lesson for young Swifties." Read more

Customers find the book great for swifties, little swifty fans, and a great way to kickstart a young swiftie. They also say it's full of healthy/growth mindset examples that resonate with them.

"...it’s great for Swifty ." Read more

"...It’s perfect for any Swiftie !" Read more

"...But it is a childrens book and I think it is a great way to kickstart a young swiftie " Read more

" Perfect for little swifty fans " Read more

Customers find the book informative, inspiring, and lovely. They also say it contains personal details and a succinct biography of T.S. Eliot. Readers also say the book is an easy read and provides digestible information for kids.

"...It succeeds in capturing the spirit and essence of Taylor Swift's remarkable career while inspiring young readers to dream big and embrace their own..." Read more

"...This book beautifully captures Taylor’s journey in a way that’s both inspiring and accessible for young readers...." Read more

"This book was full of interesting facts and information . The young recipient loved this book and was quite anxious to read it through." Read more

Customers find the biography sweet, showing Taylor's entire life with personal details. They also say it highlights key events in Taylor's childhood and life.

"...does an excellent job of providing a well-rounded and authentic portrayal of Taylor's journey , making it both informative and engaging for readers..." Read more

"...Super cute drawings and little stories of Taylor and a great value for under $5. Highly recommend a copy for a Swiftie collection!" Read more

"The little Swiftie in our family adores this book. It's a lovely biography of Taylor Swift and has a very empowering message for anyone who dares to..." Read more

"I bought this for myself. I loved reading it to my kids. Cute biography of Taylor while also how incredible she is. Great for Swifties of all ages." Read more

Customers find the tone of the book nostalgic, heartwarming, magical, and sweet. They also say it's a treasure to keep for generations.

"...Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography" is a delightful and heartwarming tribute to one of the most beloved artists of our time...." Read more

"Taylor and Little Golden Books, what more could any human want??? A sweet , cute, succinct bio...." Read more

"...The illustration and the writing are great! It’s nostalgic for me because it is a little golden book." Read more

"...The illustrations are cute, and the nostalgia is great for anyone who grew up reading little golden books...." Read more

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Perfect Introduction to Taylor Swift for Little Fans

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Taylor Swift: A Biography

Nicole moore.

7 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 8, 2016

About the author

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Introduction

(born 1989). American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift rose to the top of the country music charts with her pop-infused tales of teen heartache. She then moved into a successful pop music career. She broke various sales records and collected multiple awards and honors during her rise to superstar status.

Early Life and Career

Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania. She became interested in music at an early age. At age 11 she sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a professional men’s basketball game. The following year she began to write songs. When she was 13, Swift’s family moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee, to be closer to the country music scene in nearby Nashville.

In 2004, at age 14, Swift signed with Sony/ATV as a songwriter. Eventually, however, she moved to the Big Machine label. Her first single, “Tim McGraw,” was released in 2006. It was an immediate success, spending eight months on the Billboard country singles chart. Swift followed with a self-titled debut album, which sold more than one million copies by 2007. She maintained a rigorous touring schedule, opening for artists such as Rascal Flatts , George Strait , Tim McGraw , and Faith Hill .

With her second album, Fearless (2008), Swift managed to attract a mainstream pop audience without losing her country flavor. Fearless opened at number one on the Billboard Top 200 chart. Popular singles include “White Horse” and “Love Story.” These helped to keep the album on top of the Billboard chart longer than any other album released in the previous 10 years.

Country and Pop Music Dominance

In 2009 Swift began her first tour as the main star, playing to sold-out audiences across North America. That year she won many awards, including album of the year for Fearless from the Academy of Country Music. She also earned a best female video award for “You Belong with Me” at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs). (During her VMA acceptance speech, Swift was interrupted by rapper Kanye West. He protested that the award should have gone to Beyoncé for what he called “one of the best videos of all time.”) Swift continued her dominance at the Country Music Association (CMA) awards, where she won in all four categories in which she was nominated.

Swift began 2010 with an impressive showing at the Grammy Awards. She collected four top prizes: best country song, best country album, best female country vocal performance, and album of the year. Later that year she made her feature-film debut in the romantic comedy Valentine’s Day and was named a spokesperson for CoverGirl cosmetics. Her third album, Speak Now (2010), brought her more success and popularity. It contains references to unsuccessful romantic relationships with various celebrities.

Swift reclaimed the CMA entertainer of the year award in 2011. The following year she won Grammy Awards for best country solo performance and best country song for “Mean,” a single from Speak Now . In 2012 she continued her acting career with a voice role in the animated Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax before releasing her next collection of songs, Red . Much of the album embraced a bold pop-rock sound. The lead single, the gleeful “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” gave Swift her first number-one hit on the Billboard pop singles chart.

In 2014 Swift released 1989 , an album titled after the year of her birth and reportedly inspired by the music of that era. Although Swift had already been steadily moving away from traditional country music, she called 1989 her first “official pop album.” On the strength of the upbeat song “Shake It Off,” the album proved to be another blockbuster for Swift. Its first-week sales surpassed those of Red . Also in 2014 Swift appeared in a supporting role in The Giver , a film adaptation of Lois Lowry ’s dystopian novel for young adults.

Later Albums

In 2017 Swift released the hit song “Look What You Made Me Do.” Her album Reputation became the top-selling American record that year. In 2018 Swift left the Big Machine label and signed with Republic Records and Universal Music Group. Big Machine owned the master recordings of Swift’s six albums. Swift revealed that her attempts to acquire the master tapes had been unsuccessful. She later rerecorded the songs on those albums in an effort to gain control of her work. She hoped that her remade songs—not the originals—would be used in licensing deals. She would then be able to collect any profits earned from those songs.

In 2019 Swift released her seventh album, Lover , which she described as “a love letter to love itself.” That year she also appeared in the musical Cats , a film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber ’s hugely successful stage production. Miss Americana , a documentary about Swift’s life and career, debuted in 2020. That same year Swift released a surprise album, Folklore , which was both a critical and commercial success. It earned a Grammy Award for best album of the year, making Swift the first female to win in that category three times. She released a companion album, Evermore , later in 2020.

In 2023 the music streaming platform Spotify named Swift its most-played artist. Later that year Time magazine honored her as Person of the Year.

At the Grammy Awards in February 2024, Swift made history again when she won for album of the year for Midnights (2022). With that win she became the first artist to win in that category four times. In April she released her next album, The Tortured Poets Department . It contains 16 songs. Within hours Swift released a 15-song second part titled The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology . The double album broke several records, including earning the most streams in a single day—more than three million—on Spotify.

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Taylor Swift Timeline 1989-Present

Taylor swift info.

Born – 13th December 1989 Father – Scott Kingsley Swift Mother – Andrea Gardner Finlay Siblings – Austin Kingsley (b. 1992) Spouse – none Children – none Official Site – Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift Timeline

First published 2019; updated and republished Aug 29 2022 @ 12:24 pm – Updated – [last-modified]

Harvard Reference for Taylor Swift Timeline:

Heather Y Wheeler. (2019 – 2022). Taylor Swift Timeline 1989-Present Day. https://www.thetimelinegeek.com/taylor-swift. Last accessed [date]

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Taylor Swift Facts & Worksheets

Taylor swift is a multi-grammy award-winning american singer-songwriter and one of the youngest artists in grammy history to win album of the year., search for worksheets, download the taylor swift facts & worksheets.

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Table of Contents

Taylor Alison Swift is a multi-Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter who is one of the youngest artists in Grammy history to win Album of the Year. Her discography encompasses a wide range of genres, with her narrative songwriting frequently inspired by her personal experiences.

See the fact file below for more information on Taylor Swift or you can download our 30-page Taylor Swift worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

• Taylor Swift was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania , on December 13, 1989. Scott Swift, her father, is a stockbroker; Andrea Swift, her mother, is a housewife; and Austin Swift, her younger brother, is an actor. Taylor spent her childhood with her parents on a Christmas tree farm.
• At 9, Taylor became interested in musical theatre when she performed in Berks Youth Theater Academy productions. Taylor began taking vocal and acting lessons in New York City, and she later decided to focus on country music after being inspired by Shania Twain and Faith Hill. 
• When she was 12 years old, a computer repairman named Ronnie Cremer taught her how to play the guitar and assisted her with her first attempts as a songwriter, leading her to write “Lucky You”.
• Taylor modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch in 2003 with the help of a family friend manager, and had an original song included on the show’s compilation CD. This came with the opportunity to meet with major record labels. Taylor was offered an artist development deal after performing original songs at an RCA Records showcase.
• At 14, Taylor’s family relocated to Nashville in Hendersonville, Tennessee , where she attended high school. She then transferred to accommodate her touring schedule through homeschooling and graduated from high school a year early.

CAREER BEGINNINGS

• In Nashville, Taylor collaborated with Music Row songwriters like Troy Verges and Brett Beavers and formed a working relationship with Liz Rose.
• Taylor became the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house’s youngest artist but left Sony-owned RCA Records. Taylor believed she was running out of time because she wanted to record her early years on an album while they still represented what she was going through.
• In 2005, Taylor caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, a record executive preparing to form Big Machine Records, at a showcase. Her father purchased a 3% stake in Big Machine, and she became one of the company’s first signings.
• Taylor then began to work on her debut album with Nathan Chapman to produce her songs. Taylor’s first lead single, “Tim McGraw”, was released on June 19, 2006, and her first album, “Taylor Swift”, was released on October 24, 2006.
• Her first album peaked at number 5 in the United States . Taylor released four more singles from her debut album, all of which charted on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs. She also released her first 2 EPs, “The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection” in October 2007 and “Beautiful Eyes” in July 2008. 
• Taylor Swift was named Songwriter/Artist of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association in 2007, making her the youngest person to receive the honor. She also won the Country Music Association’s (CMA) Horizon Award for Best New Artist, the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards for Top New Female Vocalist, and the American Music Awards (AMA) Favorite Country Female Artist. 

FEARLESS (2ND ALBUM)

• “Fearless” was released on November 11, 2008. It debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and was the best-selling album in the US in 2009.
• “Love Story”, the lead single, reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 1 in Hot Country Songs. 
• The second single, “You Belong With Me”, peaked at 2 in the US Billboard Hot 100 and was the first country song to top Billboard’s all-genre Radio Songs chart. It won the award for Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2009.
• Taylor’s first headlining concert tour, “The Fearless Tour”, grossed more than $63 million. A three-part documentary miniseries called “Journey to Fearless” aired on television and was later released on DVD and Blu-ray.
• Taylor won multiple awards for her album at prestigious awards such as the CMAs and the ACMs, including Artist of the Year at the AMAs, and her first Album of the Year statue at the 52nd Grammys. Billboard also gave her the title of Female Artist of the Year in 2009.
• Taylor also co-wrote songs with John Mayer, Boys Like Girls, and Kellie Pickler, as well as two tracks for the Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana, “Crazier” and “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home”.
• She also contributed two songs to the Valentine’s Day movie soundtrack, including the single “Today Was a Fairytale”, which peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• While filming her cinematic debut in Valentine’s Day , in October 2009, Swift began a romantic relationship with co-star Taylor Lautner; they split up later that year.

SPEAK NOW (3RD ALBUM)

• Taylor released “Mine”, the lead single on “Speak Now”, in August 2010. Mine debuted at number 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Taylor wrote all 17 tracks on her third record by herself and co-produced every song.
• The album was released on October 25, 2010, selling 1 million copies in its first week. It became the fastest-selling digital album by a female artist, earning her an entry in the 2010 Guinness World Records.
• Taylor won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance at the 54th Grammy Awards in 2012 for “Mean”. She also won Songwriter of the Year at the Broadcast and Music Inc. (BMI) Awards, Entertainer of the Year at the ACMs and CMAs, and Billboard’s Woman of the Year for Speak Now. Taylor also won Artist of the Year and Favorite Country Album at the 2011 AMAs.
• The Speak Now World Tour took place between 2011 and 2012, grossing more than $123 million. The “Speak Now World Tour Live” album was released in November 2011.
• Taylor also contributed two original songs to The Hunger Games soundtrack, “Eyes Open” and “Safe & Sound”. The latter went on to win a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media. Taylor also featured on B.o.B’s single “Both of Us”, which was released in May 2012.
• Later in 2010, Taylor dated actor Jake Gyllenhaal for a short time. She then dated Conor Kennedy from July to September 2012.

RED (4TH ALBUM)

• Taylor released “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, the lead single on “RED”, in August 2012. It topped the iTunes digital song sales chart only 50 minutes after its release, earning her the Guinness World Record for Fastest Selling Single in Digital History.
• On October 22, 2012, RED was released. Taylor incorporates new genres into the album, such as heartland rock, dubstep, and dance-pop influences.
• RED debuted at number 1 in the US, selling 1.2 million copies in its first week. It made Taylor the first female to have two million-selling album openings.
• The RED Tour, which ran from March 2013 to June 2014, grossed more than $150 million, making it the highest-grossing country tour.
• Taylor received 4 Grammy nominations, a VMA trophy, multiple AMA statues, and a BMI award for Songwriter of the Year for RED. She also received the CMAs’ Pinnacle Award, making her the second recipient.
• Taylor recorded “Sweeter than Fiction” for the One Chance soundtrack in 2013. It was her first collaboration with producer Jack Antonoff. Taylor also collaborated with Tim McGraw and Keith Urban on “Highway Don’t Care”, one of the year’s most successful country songs.
• During this time, she dated the singer Harry Styles.

1989 (5TH ALBUM)

• Taylor relocated to New York City in 2014 to work on her album “1989”. Taylor promoted 1989 as her “first documented, official pop album”. 1989 was released on October 27, 2014. It sold 1.28 million copies in its first week, debuting at the top of the Billboard 200 chart.
• The 1989 World Tour, which ran from May to December 2015, was the highest-grossing tour of the year, with total revenue of $250 million.
• Taylor was again named Billboard’s Woman of the Year in 2014, and she received the inaugural Dick Clark Award for Excellence at the 2014 AMAs. She won numerous other awards during this time.
• “1989” won three Grammy Awards in 2016, including Album of the Year. Taylor was the first woman and the fifth act in history to win it twice as a lead artist.
• Taylor dated Calvin Harris, a DJ and producer, from March 2015 to June 2016, when they co-wrote the song “This Is What You Came For”. Taylor started dating actor Joe Alwyn in September 2016 after dating Tom Hiddleston for a few months. 
• “Better Man”, a song Taylor wrote during the RED era, was released on Little Big Town’s album “The Breaker”, and earned Taylor Song of the Year at the 51st CMAs.
• Taylor worked with Zayn Malik on “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” for the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack. The song topped number 2 in the US and was named Best Collaboration at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards.

REPUTATION (6TH ALBUM)

• “Reputation” became one of the most successful comebacks in history after Taylor disappeared from social media in 2016. “Look What You Made Me Do” was the album’s lead single and its music video broke the record for most views in the first 24 hours.
• On November 10, 2017, the album was released, and it featured a heavy electro-pop sound with influences from hip hop, R&B, and EDM. It sold 1.21 million copies in the first week.
• From May to November 2018, Taylor embarked on her Reputation Stadium Tour. The tour grossed $345.7 million worldwide. The Reputation Stadium Tour concert film was released on Netflix on December 31. 
• Taylor won 4 awards at the 2018 AMAs. She had won 23 AMAs following the ceremony, making her the most awarded female musician in AMA history.

LOVER (7TH ALBUM)

• Taylor signed a new deal with Universal Music Group in November 2018. The contract stated that she would retain ownership of her master recordings. 
• “Lover” was released on August 23, 2019, and became her sixth consecutive album to sell over 500,000 copies in its first week in the US. The album’s 18 songs charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in the same week. Lover was the best-selling solo album in the world in 2019, selling 3.2 million copies.
• The album received great recognition, including 3 Grammy nominations. Taylor was the first woman to win Artist of the Decade at the AMAs. 
• Taylor played Bombalurina in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats . She co-wrote and recorded “Beautiful Ghosts”, an original song for the film, which earned her another Golden Globe and a Grammy nomination.
• Miss Americana , a documentary that follows her life and career over the years, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released on Netflix in January 2020. It includes her original song “Only the Young”, which she wrote following the 2018 US presidential elections.

FOLKLORE AND EVERMORE (8TH & 9TH ALBUM)

• Taylor surprised her fans and revealed on July 23, 2020 that she would be releasing “folklore”. The album became the year’s longest-running #1 after debuting at #1 on the Billboard 200. “cardigan”, the lead single, also debuted at the top spot.
• Taylor received 5 Grammy nominations for “folklore”, including Album and Song of the Year. She became the first woman to receive the Grammy’s top award three times when she took home the Album of the Year statue.
• Taylor surprised her fans on December 10, 2020, when she revealed “evermore”. The album and its lead single, “willow” both entered at the top of the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 charts. Taylor became the first artist to debut twice at the top of the singles and album charts by having both sister albums achieve this feat.
• Both albums sold over a million copies worldwide in their first week, and “folklore” set a new mark for the number of female artists’ first-day Spotify album streams.

RE-RECORDINGS

• During the promotion for “Lover”, Taylor became embroiled in a feud with manager Scooter Braun and her former label, Big Machine, over acquiring her back catalogue masters. She had tried for years to obtain the masters, but Big Machine would only allow her to do so if she exchanged a new album for an older one under another contract, which she refused to sign. Taylor’s masters, videos, and artwork were sold to Shamrock Holdings for $300 million in October 2019. 
• In November 2020, Taylor started working on re-recordings of her albums. Taylor released these with “Taylor’s Version” added to their titles. 
• “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” was released on April 9, 2021, and became the first re-recorded album to reach the top spot on the Billboard 200. In addition to the 20 tracks, it also contained 6 previously unheard songs.
• On November 12, “RED (Taylor’s Version)” was released. Taylor’s short film and final song, “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)”, debuted at the top of the Hot 100 chart. 
• On September 17, 2021, Taylor released “Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)”, and on May 6, 2022, “This Love (Taylor’s Version)”. 
• Taylor released “Carolina” in 2022 as a soundtrack for the mystery drama Where the Crawdads Sing .
• At the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, 2022, she took home three honors, including Video of the Year (for All Too Well: The Short Film) for the third time. In her acceptance speech, she revealed the name of her 10th studio album, “Midnights”, which will be released in October 2022. 

Griffin Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle that includes everything you need to know about Taylor Swift across 30 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use worksheets that are perfect for teaching kids about Taylor Swift,  who is a multi-Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter and one of the youngest artists in Grammy history to win Album of the Year.

Complete List of Included Worksheets

Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.

• Taylor Swift Facts 
• You Belong With Me
• Blank Space
• Message in a Bottle
• Shake It Off
• …Ready for It?

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Use With Any Curriculum

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Taylor Swift performs during the “Eras” tour.

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Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

Experts weigh in on her fanbase loyalty, skills as songwriter, businesswoman as her albums, tours break financial, popularity records

Whether you’re a fan of Taylor Swift or not, it’s hard to deny the cultural and financial juggernaut the pop superstar has become this year. Her album “Midnights,” released in late 2022, was the year’s top-seller at 1.8 million copies, twice that of the second-biggest by Harry Styles. Her latest, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” debuted in July at No. 1, giving Swift her 12th in the top spot, surpassing Barbra Streisand for the most No. 1 albums by a woman artist.

Swift’s 131-date “Eras” world tour, currently packing stadiums across the U.S., is on track to be the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, at $1.4 billion, when it ends next year. Analysts estimate the tour will also have a total economic impact from tour-related spending of $5 billion on host cities. Even the Federal Reserve noted the effect her tour is having on regional economies.

To better understand the Swift phenomenon, the Gazette asked some Harvard and Berklee College of Music faculty to assess her artistry, fan base, the tour’s economic impact, and her place in the industry. Interviews have been edited for clarity and length.

‘Very few people have her songwriting talent’ Stephanie Burt, poet and Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English

Gazette: How good is Swift as a songwriter?

Burt: She has a terrific ear in terms of how words fit together. She has a sense both of writing songs that convey a feeling that can make you imagine this is the songwriter’s own feelings, like in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” and a way of telling stories and creating characters. She can write songs that take place at one moment, and she can write songs where the successive verses give you a series of events, like in “Betty” or “Fifteen.”

She has a lot of different gifts as a songwriter, both at the macro level, how the song tells a story or presents an attitude, and at the micro level, how the vowels and consonants fit together, and she’s able to exercise that range, along with quite a lot of melodic gifts, and in a way that does not make her seem highbrow or alienate potential audience members. I would not be surprised to discover that her body of songwriting altogether had a larger number of words than any body of comparable hit songs by a comparable songwriter, except for someone like Bob Dylan.

One of the things that’s really remarkable for me about her is that harmonically, she’s not usually that interesting. It’s pretty normal pop chord progressions and pretty standard varieties of pop arrangement. Her great genius and her innovations and her brilliance as a songwriter is melodic and verbal. And, of course, she’s also very good at singing, which is not to be sneezed at. But she’s able to do that within the fairly tight constraints of existing, easily recognizable chord progressions and rhythmic setups.

She’s able to create verbal hooks, “I’m only 17. I don’t know anything, but I know I miss you.” They stick in your mind, and you spin stories out from them. That’s just being a good writer. She’s a celebrity with a complicated personal life that has been lived in the public eye for quite some time, and so, people speculate about the meanings of her songs, both because they are complex and meaningful works of art, and because some of them do speak to public facts about her life outside the songs.

“Fifteen,” which is a terrific song, gains resonance if you know that it’s about a real person and they’re still friends. But no one would care if it weren’t a brilliantly constructed song. Take something from “Speak Now”: It’s nice to know that “Dear John” is about John Mayer, who really had no business dating a 19-year-old, but it’s also a song about a pattern [of behavior], and it works in itself.

There’s all kinds of celebrity gossip about pop stars who maybe have her level of vocal talent and performing talent but happen not to have her level of songwriting talent. Very few people have her songwriting talent.

Gazette: Which songs would you count among your very favorites?

Burt: There’s so many good songs. I find the ones that speak to me the most are the ones whose topics are closest to my own life. I’m a queer lady. She writes wonderful songs about falling in love or falling out of love with various guys. Those are not, by and large, my favorites even though they’re some of her biggest hits. “Fifteen,” “Betty,” “seven,” “It’s Nice to Have a Friend.”

I actually really like “The Last Great American Dynasty.” The two indie folk albums [“Folklore” and “Evermore”], almost everything on them is amazing. It’s so hard to sustain that level of success artistically while changing that much. Few can do it. “Nothing New” is amazing. “Anti-Hero,” which is the big hit from “Midnights,” is an absolutely fantastic and extraordinarily self-conscious song about being the kind of celebrity that she’s become.

4 albums in Billboard top 10

Taylor Swift is the only living artist to have four albums in the Billboard top 10 at the same time since Herb Alpert in 1966. Following his death in 2016, Prince had five albums in the top 10. (Swift is the only woman with four albums in the top 10 at the same time since the Billboard 200 was combined from its previously separate mono and stereo album charts into one all-encompassing list in August of 1963.)

Source: Billboard

‘Strong social and emotional bond that people feel with her’ Alexandra Gold , clinical fellow in psychology at MGH and Harvard Medical School

Gazette: Swift appears to have a devoted fan base who feel intensely connected to her and her music. Why is that?

GOLD: There is a strong social and emotional bond that people feel with her. And in general, when people become super fans or part of the fandom, it’s often because there’s something about the object of that fandom, the public figure or celebrity, that does connect back to their identity in some way. That’s often the link.

In the case of Taylor, there’s a couple of things going on. The first piece is relatability. Even though there’s aspects of her that maybe don’t feel very relatable — she’s a celebrity and lives a very different life from her fans — what she is singing about — the lyrical content as well as the emotions that underlie the lyrical content — are very relatable to a lot of people. There’s something that is very common to the human experience.

Another piece is a lot of Millennials, as well as Gen Z now, are fans of Taylor Swift. With the Millennials, a lot of people grew up alongside her. When they were having some of these first experiences, maybe with relationships or entering adulthood, she was doing that at the same time and singing about that. Her life story mapped onto their life story, in some way.

For Gen Z, during the pandemic, there was a lot of TikTok content about her, she was putting out many albums, so a new generation discovered her, and they’re also having similar experiences. Overall, she’s been really important for identity development and growth for a lot of people.

@taylorswift That’s my whole world 💕 #tstheerastour #swifttok ♬ So it goes x Miss Americana – 🪩

A third piece is aspirational. She is a role model. She is a great example of someone who sticks to their values and shows their fan base that they can reach their goals, whatever those might be. For instance, she’s claiming ownership of her work and has been successful in putting out re-recordings [of her older albums] and doing that despite barriers or obstacles that might be in the way. Seeing someone do something like that could be inspiring for a lot of young people.

And then, lastly, the fan community is a big part of this. People often form their identity around relationships not just with a celebrity, but also with other fans. The fan community that Taylor has around her, people meet their friends through it and people become part of something bigger than themselves. That is really important for them as they grow up and as they go through life.

Gazette: Swift has had to tell some fans to stop harassing people she once dated. Where’s the line between fan and fanatic?

GOLD: I think fandoms are, overall, very positive. That is an important message, that being a fan is a very positive thing. It’s important to be aware of when it’s interfering in other aspects of one’s life — not engaging in other areas that might be important, other relationships, whether time spent online is causing anxiety or stress or negative feelings for people. Trying to defend Taylor against other celebrities, for instance, that’s when it maybe goes into a category of “OK, let’s take a step back and think about what we can do to bring this back to a place where it feels more positive.” Recognize while this is a relationship that’s important to you, it’s not a friendship. And so, if someone starts to feel like there’s a two-way relationship when there’s no evidence that’s happening, that’s also something to be aware of.

‘The kinds of gains you see in an event like a Super Bowl’ Matthew Andrews , Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development at Harvard Kennedy School

GAZETTE: You and some colleagues examined the effects on cities and regions hosting mega events. The total economic impact to host cities of Swift concerts on her current tour is expected to hit $5 billion. Does that sound plausible?

ANDREWS: Those numbers, I think, are completely accurate. I would be in agreement with those numbers because those are the kinds of gains you see in an event like a Super Bowl. The thing that is so amazing about the Taylor Swift concert, in particular, is that it goes from city to city, and you see the same kind of impact in city after city. You do see it with some other musicians, as well. But this is something that’s on a scale and a consistency that we haven’t really seen before.

Swift’s 131-date “Eras” world tour, currently packing stadiums across the U.S., is on track to be the highest-grossing concert tour of all time. Pictured is a June show at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh.

Benjamin B. Braun/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP

Gazette: Which industries typically benefit when a major concert tour or sporting event takes place?

ANDREWS: The main beneficiaries in the private sector are people involved in tourism and the support network around the entertainment industry, so it is going to be hotels, restaurants, tourism agencies. It’s going to be anything to do with transportation hubs. They are going to be the primary beneficiaries.

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The costs to the public sector can be quite significant. And the cost for people in these areas who are not directly benefiting can be quite significant in terms of congestion, use of roads, just wear and tear, in terms of policing. This is a really important one — the cost of public order. Unless the government really thinks this through and charges for this as part of its permitting process, the government can end up on the short end after these kinds of events.

The other thing about these events that is increasingly attracting attention, from a public policy perspective, are climate change concerns. You have many, many people transporting themselves to a small area and a lot [are] coming through the air and through vehicles. This is something we worry about a lot more with prolonged mega events like a World Cup than with something like a Taylor Swift concert, but you do need to think about what those costs are.

‘Standing up for … rights and doing good business’ Ralph Jaccodine , assistant professor of music business/management, Berklee College of Music

GAZETTE: What are the factors that make Swift a successful performer from an industry perspective?

Jaccodine: First of all, if you’re going to talk about Taylor Swift, you’ve got to talk about the power of great songs. It all starts with the power of great songs. That’s why we’re still listening to The Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and Frank Sinatra. And like Bowie and Gaga and Dylan, she’s not afraid to stretch. She’s not afraid to bring her audience for a ride. We’ve seen her grow up in real life, from a young girl to a woman with power, and she’s owning it.

Number two, and this is really important: You’ve got to be great live. My students come to me and say, “We have 53 likes on this video, and we’re not selling tickets.” They don’t understand the power of going in front of people and blowing them away. In my business, as a manager, 80 percent of the income comes from live performances, so I want them to change lives live. I’m a massive Springsteen fan. I’m going to be seeing Springsteen at Gillette. I’ve seen him 12 times. I don’t need to see Bruce anymore. I’m an old guy, but I’m still going to rock concerts for artists to change my life. Taylor Swift’s songs, combined with how great she is live, is a powerful combination.

She’s always had a good team around her, smart people around her, good publicists, and good management. When you’re that good, you have the best in the industry. Her team is great: They build anticipation; they create a buzz about things. She’s imprinted her fans in such a way that they want everything about her. The day before a big stadium show, the T-shirt stand is open and there’s thousands of people in line. They hang on to every word of her social media posting, look at all the pictures. They share it; they talk about it; they have groups. That’s really hard to pull off.

GAZETTE: Has her advocacy for better artist compensation from streaming platforms and record labels and her fight to reclaim control of her back catalog made a difference?

Jaccodine:   Absolutely. First, in the awareness of these topics. The general music fan isn’t aware of streaming revenues or master rights or re-recording rights. They don’t know or really care, but she shines a light on all these things. She shines a light on management contracts and what labels are or what labels aren’t. The whole master recordings topic has been spotlighted by Taylor. She had the budget and the resources and the talent to re-record things. The whole exercise was done in public; the whole exercise was reported on. So now, students are studying that, and they’re questioning that for the first time.

I do know she’s empowered and imprinted serious numbers of people that are fans of music or musicians themselves because of her influence. I look at Rihanna; I look at Beyoncé; I look at Taylor Swift. These are the biggest artists on the planet. They’re all women that are empowering girls and standing up for their rights and doing good business. I love it; I love it.

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