As the world’s most popular singer, Taylor Swift has become a global icon for female empowerment, tackling issues like racism and sexism with grace and strength. She’s also a master businesswoman, navigating the music industry with both art and acumen.
But it’s her music that has really captured the public’s imagination – and there’s no denying her knack for writing a killer song. From a smoky country ballad to a bubbly bubble-gum banger, her music has resonated with fans around the world, despite their diverse backgrounds and life experiences.
Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, she moved to Nashville at age 14 and started focusing on her songwriting. She’d worked with songwriter Liz Rose on two-hour songwriting sessions after school, and she signed a publishing deal with Sony/ATV at just 14 years old. By the time she released her debut album Fearless in 2008, she was already an acclaimed crossover artist, with hits on both country and pop radio.
Her second album, Speak Now, saw her experiment with synth pop and r’n’b, further solidifying her status as one of the biggest crossover artists of her generation. The album went on to win multiple awards at prestigious music shows, including a record-breaking 23 American Music Awards.
Swift’s third album, 1989, was her most ambitious yet. She’d tapped into a range of genres to create a sexy, synth-heavy album that was hailed as an instant classic by critics and her fans alike. The title track, ‘1989’, was especially powerful, telling the story of a toxic relationship from her own experience. It’s this frankness that makes her music so relatable to many people.
In the lead-up to the release of her fourth album, Red, Taylor took to the streets of New York City in a campaign that proved her street style is as strong as her singing. Featuring a series of snaps in which she wore everything from leather jackets to slicked-back hair and ripped jeans, the campaign was a hit on social media and cemented Swift’s reputation as a fashionista.
While the rest of us were baking banana bread, doing Joe Wicks workouts and re-reading the Harry Potter books during the first COVID lockdown, Taylor Swift was in Paris working on not one but TWO new albums with The National’s Aaron Dessner. The result was folklore-inspired, slow-burning indie song ‘betty’, an ode to young love and loss of innocence told from the perspective of James – “a seventeen-year-old standing on a porch learning to apologise”. Featuring harpsichord and harmonica for that Freewheelin’ feel, it’s her most out and out country song for some time. ‘betty’ was also the most personal and vulnerable Taylor has been in her songwriting to date.
