Taylor Swift, at the top of pop

The singer was born on December 13, 1989 in Reading, Pennsylvania, as Taylor Alisson Swift. Her parents decided to name her after another musician, James Taylor. “She told me that her mother and her father had been really into my music and I loved the fact that she was named after me,” Taylor told Stereogum. “Obviously it wasn’t her choice, it was her mom and her dad, but nonetheless, I think, [fue] a great connection.”

Shortly after, his family moved to neighboring Wyomissing where he grew up on a Christmas tree plantation, causing some media to label his childhood unusual. She used another adjective, magical, to describe her in an interview with Rolling Stone. “It was a weird place to grow up. But it’s cemented in me this unnatural level of excitement about the fall and then the holiday season,” she told Esquire in 2014. “My friends are sick of me talking about the arrival of autumn. They say to me like: What are you? An elf?”

Although it was his father who ran the fir business, they all had their chores. “Mine was to remove the pods of praying mantises from the trees and collect them so the insects wouldn’t hatch inside people’s homes.”

Swift’s love affair with music began as a child. She already showed interest in her since she was little and at the age of 11 she sang “The Star-Spamgled Banner” in a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game. She only sang, she went on to play the guitar and compose.

At the age of 13, the family sold the tree farm and moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee, a little less than a five-hour drive from Nashville, the mecca of country music. “I got it into my head that there was this magical land called Nashville where dreams come true and that was where I had to go,” Swift told The Telegraph in 2011. “I started tormenting my parents nonstop, pleading with them on a daily basis let us move there.”

At the age of 14, she signed a songwriting deal with Sony/ATV while playing venues in the Nashville area. In one of these performances she was discovered by music producer Scott Borchetta, who offered her a contract with her label, Big Machine. Her first single was released in 2006.

That same year she presented her first studio album, named after her. Which was followed by “Fearless”, in 2008; “Speak Now”, two years later; “Red”, in 2012, and “1989”, in 2014. It took three years for Swift’s new work to hit the market: “Reputation”. Two years later she released “Lover” and, in 2020, she released “Folklore” and “Evermore”. “Midnights”, which will be released in October, collects the stories of 13 sleepless nights spread throughout her life.

Swift has won eleven Grammy Awards and has been nominated 42 times, among other awards, such as the aforementioned MTV award for best video of the year. It was at the same event, but in 2009, when the conflict between the singer and rapper Kanye West began. Swift went upstairs to collect the award for best female video of the year and West stormed the stage. The rapper took the microphone from her hand to say that the video that deserved the statuette was “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé.

Two years ago, Swift began re-recording her early work to regain control over it. In 2018, the singer signed with Universal Records and, later, Big Machine, her former label, became the property of Scooter Brown, music mogul and West’s former agent, who bought the rights to the first six. her albums. The following year he sold them to an investment fund. “Artists should own their own work for many reasons, but the most obvious is that the artist is the only one who really knows that body of work,” she wrote online.