Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Recognized for her songwriting, musical versatility, artistic reinventions, and influence on the music industry, she is a prominent cultural figure of the 21st century.
Swift began professional songwriting at age 14 and signed with Big Machine Records in 2005 to become a country singer. She released six studio albums under the label, four of them to country radio, starting with her 2006 self-titled album. Her next, Fearless (2008), explored country pop, and its singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me" catapulted her to prominence. Speak Now (2010) infused rock influences, while Red (2012) experimented with electronic elements and featured Swift's first Billboard Hot 100 number-one song, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together". She departed from her country image with 1989 (2014), a synth-pop album supported by the chart-topping songs "Shake It Off", "Blank Space", and "Bad Blood". Media scrutiny inspired the hip-hop-flavored Reputation (2017) and its number-one single "Look What You Made Me Do".
Swift shifted to Republic Records in 2018. She released the pop album Lover (2019) and autobiographical documentary Miss Americana (2020), embraced indie folk and alternative rock on 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore, explored chill-out styles on Midnights (2022), and released four re-recorded albums as Taylor's Version following a dispute with Big Machine. The albums and their number-one songs "Cruel Summer", "Cardigan", "Willow", "Anti-Hero" and "All Too Well" broke various records. In 2023, Swift embarked on the Eras Tour and released its accompanying concert film. She has directed music videos and films such as All Too Well: The Short Film (2021).
Having sold over 200 million records globally, Swift is one of the best-selling musicians, the most-streamed woman on Spotify, the first billionaire with music as the primary source of income, and the only act to have five albums with first-week sales of over one million copies in the US. She has been featured in lists such as Rolling Stone 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, Billboard Greatest of All Time Artists, the Time 100, and Forbes Celebrity 100. Among her accolades are 12 Grammy Awards (including three Album of the Year wins), a Primetime Emmy Award, 40 American Music Awards, 29 Billboard Music Awards, 23 MTV Video Music Awards, three IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year awards, and 101 Guinness World Records. Honored as Artist of the Decade and Woman of the Decade, Swift is an advocate for artists' rights and women's empowerment.
Life and career
Early life
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania. She is named after singer-songwriter James Taylor. Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, is a former stockbroker for Merrill Lynch and her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift (née Finlay), is a former homemaker who previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive. Taylor has a younger brother, actor Austin Swift, and is of Scottish, German, and Italian descent. Their maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was an opera singer.
Swift spent her early years on a Christmas tree farm that her father had purchased from one of his clients. She is a Christian. She attended preschool and kindergarten at Alvernia Montessori School, a Montessori school run by the Bernadine Franciscan sisters, before transferring to the Wyndcroft School. The family moved to a rented house in the suburban town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, where Swift attended Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School. She spent summers in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, until she was 14 years old, performing in a local coffee shop.
At age nine, Swift became interested in musical theater and performed in four Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions. She also traveled regularly to New York City for vocal and acting lessons. Swift later shifted her focus toward country music, inspired by Shania Twain's songs, which made her "want to just run around the block four times and daydream about everything". She spent weekends performing at local festivals and events. After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, Swift felt she needed to move to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in music. She traveled there with her mother at age eleven to visit record labels and submitted demo tapes of Dolly Parton and Dixie Chicks karaoke covers. She was rejected, however, because "everyone in that town wanted to do what I wanted to do. So, I kept thinking to myself, I need to figure out a way to be different."