Sounds of the Season: The Holiday Collection

Biography

Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Swift is a 10-time Grammy winner with a total of 35 nominations (July 2020). As of August 2020, Swift has sold over 100 million album units and 150 million singles worldwide. Taylor Swift is that rarest of pop phenomena: a superstar who managed to completely cross over from country to the mainstream. Other singers performed similar moves -- notably, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson both became enduring mainstream icons based on th...

Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Swift is a 10-time Grammy winner with a total of 35 nominations (July 2020). As of August 2020, Swift has sold over 100 million album units and 150 million singles worldwide.

Taylor Swift is that rarest of pop phenomena: a superstar who managed to completely cross over from country to the mainstream. Other singers performed similar moves -- notably, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson both became enduring mainstream icons based on their '70s work -- but Swift shed her country roots like they were a second skin; it was a necessary molting to reveal she was perhaps the sharpest, savviest populist singer/songwriter of her generation, one who could harness the Zeitgeist and turn it personal and, just as impressively, perform the reverse. These skills were evident on her earliest hits, especially the neo-tribute "Tim McGraw," but her second album, 2008's Fearless, showcased a songwriter discovering who she was and, in the process, finding a mass audience. Fearless wound up having considerable legs not only in the U.S., where it racked up six platinum singles on the strength of the Top Ten hits "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me," but throughout the world, performing particularly well in the U.K., Canada, and Australia. Speak Now, delivered almost two years later in the autumn of 2010, consolidated that success and Swift moved into the stratosphere of superstardom, with her popularity only increasing on 2012's Red and 2014's 1989, a pair of records that found her moving assuredly from country into a pop realm where she already belonged.

This sense of confidence had been apparent in Taylor Swift since the beginning. The daughter of two bankers -- her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, worked at Merrill Lynch; her mother Andrea spent time as a mutual fund marketing executive -- Swift was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and raised in suburban Wyomissing. She began to show interest in music at the age of nine, and Shania Twain wound up as her biggest formative influence. Swift started to work regularly at local talent contests, eventually winning a chance to open for Charlie Daniels. Soon, she learned how to play guitar and began writing songs, signing a music management deal with Dan Dymtrow; her family relocated to Nashville with the intent of furthering her music career. She was just 14 years old but on the radar of the music industry, signing a development deal with RCA Records in 2004. Swift sharpened her skills with a variety of professional songwriters, forming the strongest connections with Liz Rose. Taylor's original songs earned her a deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing, but not long after that 2004 deal she parted ways with Dymtrow and RCA, all with the intent of launching her recording career now, not later.

Things started moving swiftly once Swift came to the attention of Scott Borchetta, a former DreamWorks Records exec about to launch Big Machine Records. Borchetta saw Swift perform at a songwriters showcase at the Bluebird Cafe and he signed her to Big Machine in 2005; shortly afterward, she started work on her debut with producer Nathan Chapman, who'd previously helmed demos for Taylor. Boasting original song credits on every one of the record's 11 songs (she penned three on her own), Taylor Swift appeared in October 2006 to strong reviews and Swift made sure to work the album hard, appearing at every radio or television event offered and marshaling a burgeoning fan base through use of MySpace. "Tim McGraw," the first song from the album, did well but "Teardrops on My Guitar" and "Our Song" did better on both the pop and country charts, where she racked up five consecutive Top Ten singles. Other successes followed in the wake of the debut -- a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist (she lost to Amy Winehouse), stopgap EPs of Christmas songs -- but Swift concentrated on delivering her sophomore set, Fearless.

Appearing in November 2008, Fearless was certified gold by the RIAA in its first week of release, and the record gained momentum throughout 2009, earning several platinum certifications as "Love Story," "White Horse," "You Belong with Me," "Fifteen," and "Fearless" all scaled the upper reaches of the country charts while "You Belong with Me" nearly topped Billboard's Top 100.

Her flirtation with the silver screen proved brief, as she then poured herself into her third album, Speak Now. Released in October 2010, Speak Now was another massive first-week smash that refused to lose momentum. Hit singles like "Mine" and "Mean," which won two Grammys, played a big factor in its success not just on the country charts but on pop radio as well.

Following a 2011 live album called World Tour Live: Speak Now, Swift turned toward following a pop path on her fourth album, hiring such mainstream musicians as Dan Wilson, Butch Walker, and Britney Spears producer Max Martin. This mainstream pulse was evident on "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," the first single from Red. Upon its October 2012 release, Red shattered expectations by selling over a million copies in its first week, a notable achievement that was doubly impressive in an era of declining sales. Once again, Swift's album had legs: it was certified platinum four times in the U.S. and its international sales outstripped those of Speak Now. She supported Red with an international tour in 2013 and more hits came, including "I Knew You Were Trouble." and "22".

As Swift geared up for the release of her fifth album in 2014, she made it clear that 1989 was designed as her first "documented, official" pop album and that there would be no country marketing push for the record. "Shake It Off," an ebullient dance-pop throwback, hit number one upon its August 2014 release. When 1989 appeared in late October 2014, it once again shot to number one and became her third straight album to sell one million copies in its first week (a new record for any artist).

Swift gathered many awards during the subsequent year, including Billboard's Woman of the Year, the Award for Excellence at the American Music Awards, and a special 50th Anniversary Milestone Award from the CMAs. Her 1989 World Tour crossed Asia, North America, and Europe during the last half of 2015, and she won three Grammy Awards at the 2016 ceremonies, including Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best Music Video for "Bad Blood". At the end of 2016, she released "I Don’t Wanna Live Forever (Fifty Shades Darker)," a duet with ZAYN from the soundtrack for Fifty Shades Darker. The single reached the Top Five across the world.

Swift returned with her sixth album, reputation, in November 2017, preceded by the August single "Look What You Made Me Do" and its September successor, "...Ready for It?"

In April 2019, Swift released "ME!", featuring Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco as the lead single from her seventh studio album, Lover. The song debuted at number 100 on the Billboard Hot 100 three days after its release, and jumped to number two the following week—the biggest single-week jump in the chart's history. The music video for "ME! (feat. Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco)" broke a Vevo record by amassing 65.2 million views within its first day of release. However, the song received mixed reviews and Swift removed a "much-maligned" lyric of the song from the album. In June, she released the second single "You Need to Calm Down", which debuted and peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, marking her 15th top 10 debut, the most among women. In July, she released a promotional single from the album, "The Archer". The title track "Lover" was released as the third single in August, which became the third consecutive Hot 100 top-10 single from the album. Lover was released on August 23 to positive reviews, and debuted atop the Billboard 200 with a first-week tally of 867,000 units including 679,000 copies sold, making Swift the first female artist in history to have six albums sell more than 500,000 copies in a single week. It also sold more copies than all the other 199 albums on the chart combined that week. All of the album's 18 songs entered the Billboard Hot 100, setting the record for the most simultaneous chart entries for a female artist.

Taylor Swift was the first-ever recipient of Billboard's Woman of the Decade Award, and she was on hand to accept the prize at the 2019 Women in Music Event on Thursday night (Dec. 12) at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.

In July 2020, Swift unveiled a surprise new album titled folklore, announced less than 24 hours before release. The album marked another major genre shift, opting out of pop synths to offer a more mellow, intimate, folk inspired approach to songwriting and featuring collaborations with Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner of The National. The album was an instant critical success, becoming one of the most highly rated albums of all time on Metacritic. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.