Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989 in the United States, in Reading, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Andrea, a housewife, and Scott, a financial intermediary. When she was only six years old she fell in love with country music, after listening to songs by Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline and LeAnn Rimes. At the age of ten she joined Theatre Kids Live, a Kirk Cremer children’s theatre company, and Cremer encouraged her to opt for a musical career and put aside her aspirations as an actress. At the age of twelve, then, Taylor Swift learns to play guitar. Soon after, she writes “Lucky You”, her first song. She takes singing lessons in Nashville from Brett Manning, and distributes a demo with some covers she made to several record companies. Back in Pennsylvania, she is chosen to perform at the US Open and is noticed by manager Dan Dymtrow, who starts following her. A few years later Taylor Swift was contacted by RCA Records, the record company she started working with, and together with her parents she moved to Tennessee, Handersonville. After writing the song “The Outside”, which became part of “Chick with Attitude”, a Maybelline collection of songs by emerging talents, she was hired in May 2005 as songwriter for the SONY/ATV Tree company.Rejected the renewal of her contract with RCA, which prevents her from recording her own songs, performing at the Bluerid Café in Nashville, Taylor Swift hits Scott Borchetta, who has just founded a record company, Big Machine Records. The girl, then, becomes the label’s first artist. After signing the contract, she records “Tim McGraw”, her first song, which becomes her debut single. She abandons her studies to focus exclusively on music, she records the eleven tracks of “Taylor Swift”, her first record, which in its first week sells almost 40 thousand copies. The second single is “Teardrops on My Guitar”, which debuted on February 24, 2007, and a few months later was named composer and artist of the year by the Nashville Songwriters Association. She is the youngest ever to receive this award. Shortly afterwards she released her third single “Our Song”, which remained at the top of the country music charts for six weeks, followed by the young American recording of “Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection”, a Christmas EP featuring covers of classic tracks such as “Silent Night” and “White Christmas”, as well as two original pieces, “Christmas Must Be Something More” and “Christmases When You Were Mine”. The following year the Pennsylvania artist was nominated for the Grammy Awards in the category of best emerging artists. Although the final award goes to Amy Winehouse. This was before the release of the fourth single on her debut album, “Picture to Burn”, which came in third place on the Billboard Country Song.After releasing “Live from Soho”, EP that includes two new releases, he receives the Superstar of Tomorrow award at the 10th Annual Young Hollywood Awards.In the summer of 2008 he released an EP called “Beautiful Eyes”, which is sold only in Wal-Mart stores.In the first week alone, it sold more than 40,000 copies and took part in the video of “Online”, a song by famous country singer Brad Paisley, and then shot “MTV’s Once Upon a Prom”, a documentary for MTV.In November, Taylor Swift released “Fearless”, her second album.It’s the first record of a woman to stay in first position for eleven weeks on the Billboard 200 in the history of country music. The first single extracted is “You Belong With Me”, which is followed by “White Horse”.At the end of the year “Fearless” turned out to be the best-selling record in the United States, with about 3 million and 200 thousand copies. In January 2010 it was released on iTunes “Today Was a Fairytale”, a song that is part of the soundtrack of the movie “Appointment with Love” and that allows Taylor Swift to conquer the record – for a woman – of the highest number of downloads performed in the first week.In October, then, the American artist released her third studio album, titled “Speak Now”, for whose production she was joined by Nathan Chapman.Again, the numbers are record-breaking: more than a million downloads in the first week alone.”On May 23, 2011 Taylor won the Top Country Album, Top Country Artist and Top Billboard 200 Artist categories at the Billboard Music Awards.A few weeks later she was included by “Rolling Stone” magazine in the list of the sixteen most successful singers – Queen of Pop – in recent times.In November “Speak Now: World Tour Live” was released, a live album that included seventeen of the artist’s live tracks and a DVD. Taylor then collaborated with Civil Wars on the song “Safe&Sound”, which became part of the soundtrack of the movie “Hunger Games”, which also included the song “Eyes Open”. A few months later she released “Red”, her fourth studio album, whose first single extracted is “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”.In 2014 he records his fifth album, “1989”, which contains the singles “Out of the Woods” and “Welcome to New York”.In the same year the single “Shake It Off” was nominated for the Grammy Awards in the Song of the Year category and the Record of the Year category.The following year Taylor Swift, after winning the Billboard Music Award for Woman of the Year, won a BRIT Award as International Female Solo Artist.In 2016 Forbes magazine crowned her as the highest paid celebrity in the world with $170 million earned in the last year.The following year the same magazine estimates her assets to reach 280 million dollars; in 2018 the assets would be 320 million dollars and the following year 360 million dollars.2017 sees the release of a new album entitled “Reputation”.In the last year of 2010, at the American Music Awards, Taylor Swift is named “Artist of the Decade”; in the same context she also wins the award for “Artist of the Year”. Her popularity and influence are also confirmed by Billboard who gives her the title of “Woman of the Decade”, also in 2019 her seventh studio album, entitled “Lover”, is released. The album is nominated in the category “Best Pop Vocal Album” at the Grammy Awards. The homonymous song that gives the title to the album is written entirely by Taylor Swift.
Discography
2006 – Taylor Swift
2008 – Fearless
2010 – Speak Now
2012 – Red
2014 – 1989
2017 – Reputation
2019 – Lover
