Taylor Swift, in full Taylor Alison Swift, (born December 13, 1989, West Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American pop and country music singer-songwriter whose tales of young heartache achieved widespread success in the early 21st century, read
Taylor Swift quotes that’ll inspire you to step toward your dreams.
Early life
Swift showed an interest in music at an early age, and she progressed quickly from roles in children’s theatre 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, 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 that she could devote more of her time to courting country labels in nearby Nashville.
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 favourite country artist), was released in the summer of 2006.
Debut album and Fearless
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.
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) appeared. It was a remake of her 2008 album with several previously unreleased tracks.
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.