Taylor Swift
Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift was born in December 1989 and raised in Pennsylvania. She was first introduced to music by her grandmother, a professional opera singer. Swift began competing in karaoke contests at the age of 10 and learned the guitar at 12.
After her family relocated to Tennessee, Swift put the country music industry on notice when she was discovered at a café night and offered a record deal. The young talent’s first single, “Tim McGraw” peaked at no. 6 on the Billboard charts and served as the lead track for her thrice Platinum-selling self-titled debut album, released in 2006.
The “Bad Blood” singer gradually shifted her sound from country to pop and released four more albums — Fearless in 2008, Speak Now in 2010, Red in 2012 and 1989 in 2014. The enormous success of the latter three earned her a world record as the first act to have three million-selling weeks on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
In 2017, the musician dropped her Reputation album. Two years later she released Lover, which she followed up with 2020’s Folklore and Evermore. Swift has won 11 Grammys and been honored in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She was also the star of her own documentary, Miss Americana, which was released on Netflix in 2020.
Swift released her first rerecorded album, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in April 2021, after Scooter Braun purchased the rights to her masters for more than $300 million from Big Machine Records Scott Borchetta. She is set to record all six of her records from her time with the label along with new songs from her vault.
Over the years, the “Out of the Woods” singer has been heavily criticized for dating several high-profile men, including Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Mayer, Harry Styles, and Tom Hiddleston, and later writing about them in her songs.
Despite the critics, Swift continues to interact with her beloved and supportive fans, give to charity, perform, and remain on the dating scene. The “Exile” singer has been dating English actor Joe Alwyn since 2017. The pair have kept their relationship as private as possible, with Swift revealing in 2020 that her boyfriend helped her cowrite songs on both Folklore and Evermore amid the coronavirus pandemic.