Taylor Swift

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American country pop singer-songwriter, guitarist and actress. In 2006, she released her debut single "Tim McGraw", which peaked at number six on the Billboard country charts. Later in October 2006, she released her self-titled debut album, which produced five hit singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts and was certified 3? Multi-Platinum by the RIAA. The New York Times described Swift as "one of pop's finest songwriters, country?s foremost pragmatist and more in touch with her inner life than most adults".

According to Nielsen SoundScan, Swift was the biggest 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. She was the first artist in the history of Nielsen SoundScan to have two different albums in the Top 10 on the year end album chart. Fearless has topped the Billboard 200 in 11 non-consecutive weeks. No album has spent more time at number one since 1999-2000. It also was the first album by a female artist in country music history to log eight weeks at #1 on The Billboard 200. In mid-January 2009, Swift became the first country artist to top the 2 million mark in paid downloads with three different songs. As of the week ending February 8, 2009, Swift's single "Love Story" became the country song with most paid downloads in history and the first country song to top the Mainstream Top 40 chart. Swift then subsequently went onto replicate the feat, reaching #1 again on the Mainstream Top 40 in September 2009 with "You Belong With Me", making it just the second country song in the chart's history to reach the top. According to the 2009 issue of Forbes, Swift is ranked as the 69th most powerful celebrity with over $18 million in earnings this year.

Early life

Swift 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 During one summer, Swift devoted herself to writing a 350 page (unpublished) novel.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 prot?g?e 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 interest

Swift 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.

Early work

Swift's greatest musical influence is Shania Twain. Her other influences include her grandmother, LeAnn Rimes, Tina Turner and Dolly Parton. Although her grandmother was a professional opera singer, Taylor's tastes always ran more toward country and she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton at an early age. 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 Caf?, 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.

Swift's first single, "Tim McGraw", was released to radio in mid-2006 and reached number 6 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart during the week of January 27, 2007. Swift said, "I wrote the song in my freshman year of high school. I was dating a guy who was about to go off to college. I knew we were going to break up so I started thinking of all the things that I knew would remind him of me. Surprisingly, the first thing that came to mind was that my favorite country artist is Tim McGraw." Her self-titled debut album Taylor Swift was released on October 24, 2006