Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter known for her autobiographical songwriting, artistic versatility, and cultural impact. She is one of the best-selling and highest-grossing recording artists of all time, with a record seven albums that have sold over a million copies in the United States. She has received multiple awards and accolades including multiple Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song and several other nominations, and is the most-followed artist on Instagram.
Born in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Taylor began writing songs and singing karaoke at the age of 10. She was encouraged to take guitar lessons from a local repairman, who taught her the chords to “Love Story” by the Backstreet Boys. At 13, she wrote her first full-length album, Fearless. The album quickly went platinum and propelled her to the top of the country music charts. Taylor’s teen years were marked by a string of relationships with celebrity males including Cory Monteith, Jake Gyllenhaal, and the son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In 2010, Taylor released her fifth album, Speak Now, which further cemented her status as a crossover queen. She also starred as Bombalurina in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s massively popular musical Cats and won a Golden Globe for her performance.
The following year, Taylor pushed the boundaries of her sound on Red, which was influenced by ’80s pop and punk and made her a global superstar. She continued her acting career with a role in the animated Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, and won a Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance. She also won a CMT entertainer of the year award and made her first appearance at the Billboard Music Awards.
In 2023, she returned to the soft, bed-like sonics of Midnights with 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department. The record delved into extremes and heightened emotions with songs that double as short stories and character studies from Proustian flashbacks (“cardigan”) to outcast widows (“the last great american dynasty”) and doomed relationships (“exile”). The album spent 16 weeks atop the charts, her longest run yet, and launched her multi-year Eras Tour.
In 2019 Taylor shocked fans with the edgy, pop-inspired Reputation, which featured a diss track about her ex-boyfriend Kanye West and was the highest-selling album of the year. The album was followed by the surprise release of a full-length documentary, Miss Americana, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. In 2021, she starred in the Broadway adaptation of The Rhythm of the Night and won a Grammy for Best Original Song for “Blank Space.” She also wrote and recorded the theme song to the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. Taylor re-teamed with producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner for the 2020 album folklore and its sister record evermore, both of which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. She then toured the world in 2021 and 2022, bringing her massively successful Eras Tour to over 100 venues worldwide.
