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Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American country pop
Swift released her second album, Fearless, in November 2008. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Swift is the highest-selling artist of 2008 in the United States with combined sales of more than four million albums. Swift's Fearless and her self-titled album finished 2008 at number three and number six respectively, with sales of 2.1 and 1.5 million.[title=2008 U.S. Music Purchases Exceed 1.5 Billion; Growth in Overall Music Purchases Exceeds 10%] Fearless has topped the Billboard 200 in 11 non-consecutive weeks, a feat no album has spent more time at number one since 1999-2000. With combined singles from her two albums, she is the female artist with the most top 40 hits this decade. According to the 2009 issue of Forbes, Swift is ranked as the 69th most powerful celebrity with over $18 million in earnings this year. In 2010, Swift will make her feature film debut in the film ''Valentine's Day.
Early lifeSwift was born in the borough of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of Scott Swift, a stock broker, and his wife Andrea, a homemaker
. She has a younger brother, Austin. When she was in fourth grade, Swift won a national poetry contest with a three page poem entitled "Monster In My Closet".
At ten, Swift began writing songs and singing at karaoke contests, festivals, and fairs around her hometown. During one summer, Swift devoted herself to writing a 350 page (unpublished) novel.
She was a member of Kirk Cremer's SNL-inspired kid's sketch comedy group, TheatreKids Live!, where she was a natural comedic talent. After seeing her karaoke performance at one of the cast parties, it was Cremer's mother who first suggested that Swift seemed more of a natural to pursue a career in country music, rather than theatrical performing. Cremer soon leased space at a local mall and began to showcase his young protégée in weeknight performances of country songs with karaoke backing tracks. Emboldened by her performances and growing audiences, she began to perform in other local open mike and karaoke nights. Her first major show was a well-received performance at the Bloomsburg Fair, arranged by local performer Pat Garrett.
Songwriting interestSwift first learned to play guitar from a computer repairman who showed her how to play three chords. After learning those three chords, she wrote her first song, "Lucky You". She began writing songs regularly and used it as outlet to help her with her pain from not fitting in at school. Other kids would react badly to her so she wrote songs about them.Citation needed
Early workSwift's greatest musical influence is Shania Twain.[title=Catching Up With Taylor Swift ] Her other influences include her grandmother, LeAnn Rimes, Tina Turner and Dolly Parton. Although her grandmother was a professional opera singer,[title=Taylor Swift Biography at GAC ] Taylor's tastes always ran more toward country and she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton at an early age.[Taylor Swift at Ask Men.com ] She also credits the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain for demonstrating how much impact can be made by "stretching boundaries".
At age 11, Swift made her first trip to Nashville hoping to obtain a record deal by distributing a demo tape of her singing with karaoke songs. She gave a copy to every label in town. Swift faced rejection, not just from record labels, but also from her peers.
After Swift returned to Pennsylvania, she was asked to sing at the U.S. Open tennis tournament; her rendition of the national anthem received a lot of attention. Swift started writing songs and playing 12-string guitar when she was 12. Swift began to regularly visit Nashville and wrote songs with local songwriters. By the time she was 14, her family decided to move to an outlying Nashville suburb.
When Swift was fifteen, she rejected RCA Records because the company wanted to keep her on a development deal. Swift then performed at Nashville's songwriters' venue, The Bluebird Café, catching the attention of Scott Borchetta who signed her to his newly-formed record label, Big Machine Records. She also became the youngest staff songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house at 14.
Music career2006–2008: Taylor SwiftSwift released her debut single, "Tim McGraw", in mid-2006, reaching number 6 on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Songs chart.[title=Artist Chart History – Taylor Swift ] Her self-titled debut album was later released on October 24, 2006.[title=Taylor Swift – Discography ] Swift wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on the album, which debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200 and sold 39,000 copies during its first week. It later peaked at number one at Billboard Top Country Albums and number five on the Billboard 200. It also spent eight consecutive weeks at the top of the Top Country Albums charts and remained at the top for 24 out of 91 weeks. The only other country artists this decade to achieve the number-one sales position for 20 weeks or more are
The Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwood. As of November 2008, Taylor Swift has sold over three million copies and 7.5 million single downloads.
Swift has surpassed the 200 million mark for music streams on MySpace. She is currently ranked in the Top 10 for the most MySpace visits for all genres of music, and is MySpace's current top-ranking Country artist.Dead link
On August 21, 2007, Swift performed live on the season finale of ''America's Got Talent''.[ Taylor Swift performs on "America's Got Talent" ] The second single from the Taylor Swift album, "Teardrops on My Guitar", was released February 24, 2007. The song originally made its peak positions in mid-2007, peaking at #2 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart and #33 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was re-released to the Hot 100 and Pop 100 in late 2007 with a pop remix that brought "Teardrops on My Guitar" to #13 on the Hot 100 and #11 on the Pop 100. In October 2007, Swift's songwriting peers at the Nashville Songwriters Association International honored her with their Songwriter/Artist of the Year Award, making her the youngest artist ever to win the award.
On November 7, 2007, Swift won the 2007 CMA Horizon Award and also performed "Our Song," the third single from her album, which would go on to become her first #1 song the week of December 22, 2007, where it leaped up from the #6 spot. This was the biggest jump to Number One since January 1998, when Tim McGraw's "Just to See You Smile", also jumped from #6 to #1. "Our Song" spent six weeks at #1 on the Country charts and also peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #24 on the Billboard Pop 100. Swift also recorded a holiday album, Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection, which was released October 16, 2007, exclusively available at Target stores. The album, which was not as successful as her self-titled debut, featured both holiday classics such as "Last Christmas" and original songs written by Swift. Swift was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the category of Best New Artist, but lost to Amy Winehouse. Swift's successful single, "Picture to Burn" was the fourth single from her debut album. The song debuted early in 2008 and peaked at #3 on the Billboard Country Chart in the spring of 2008.
Big Machine Records announced the release of "Should've Said No" on Monday, May 19. The song is the fifth and final single from Swift's debut album. She performed it on the 43rd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. The performance started off with her dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, but soon after a short black halter dress was revealed. In the last minute of the song, she went backstage to perform the final verse under a cascading waterfall. Swift had wanted to do that performance on stage with the water and the change of clothes since she was ten years old.
"Should've Said No" became her second Number One single for the chart dated August 23, 2008. In June 2008, at the CMA Music Festival held in Nashville, Swift signed autographs for nearly eight straight hours. It was the longest autograph-signing session since Garth Brooks' 23-hour marathon in 1996. In Summer 2008, Swift released Beautiful Eyes, an EP sold exclusively at Wal-Mart.[title=Wal-Mart "Eyes" New Taylor Swift Project ] In its first week of release, the album sold 45,000 copies, debuting at #1 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and #9 on the Billboard 200. With her self-titled debut album at #2 the same week, Swift became the first artist to hold the Top 2 positions of the Top Country Albums chart since LeAnn Rimes did so in 1997.[title=Taylor Swift owns top of country chart ] Swift plays a custom-made Taylor acoustic guitar made of koa wood.
2008–present: Fearless and MTV VMA controversySwift's latest studio album, Fearless, was released in the United States on November 11, 2008.[title=Coming attractions: Not all boys make Taylor Swift cry ] The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart. Its sales of 592,304 were the highest debut of any country artist in 2008. This is also the largest opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of music, and the fourth biggest overall behind Lil Wayne, AC/DC and Coldplay. Its lead single "Love Story" became a hit on both the country and pop charts. During the first week of release, more than 129,000 of Swift's sales were sold digitally. This gives Swift the best online start for any country album in history. It also makes Swift the fourth biggest week for a digital album since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking them in 2004.[title=Taylor Swift Soars to No.1] Through its eighth week of release, Fearless has sold more than 338,467 paid downloads, making it the bestselling country album in digital history. In second place is Swift's debut Taylor Swift with sales of 236,046 downloads as of April 18, 2009.
DEFAULTSORT:Swift, Taylor
Category:1989 births
Category:American child singers
Category:American country singers
Category:American country singer-songwriters
Category:American female guitarists
Category:American female singers
Category:American television actors
Category:American film actors
Category:Big Machine Records artists
Category:English-language singers
Category:Living people
Category:Musicians from Pennsylvania
Category:People from Berks County, Pennsylvania
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