Taylor Swift

Nashville

Taylor Swift was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1989, and named after James Taylor. When she was 14 her family moved to Hendersonville, Tennessee. In 2004 she signed with Sony/ATV Tree Music Publishing and became the youngest person in the company's history. After a showcase at the Bluebird Cafe on November 3, 2004, the executive Scott Borchetta signed her to Big Machine Records, on the condition that her albums be self-written.

Her debut, Taylor Swift, appeared in October 2006, produced with Nathan Chapman. It spent 157 weeks on the Billboard 200, the longest run by an album in the 2000s, and she became the first female country artist to write or co-write every track on a platinum-certified debut. Fearless followed on November 11, 2008. It spent 11 weeks at number one and was the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States. Its single Love Story was the first country song to top the Pop Songs chart, and the album won Album of the Year at the 2010 Grammys. Speak Now (2010), which she wrote entirely by herself, and Red (2012) came next.

Pop

In March 2014 Swift moved from Nashville to New York City. 1989 arrived on October 27, 2014, produced with Max Martin, Shellback, Jack Antonoff, Ryan Tedder, Imogen Heap and Chapman. She had started writing it in mid-2013 on the Red Tour, wanting a record that was "sonically cohesive" and "blatant pop", with 1980s synth-pop as the model. The album was not promoted to country radio. It sold 1.287 million copies in its first week, spent 11 weeks at number one and has sold 14 million copies worldwide. Its singles included Shake It Off and Blank Space, and with Bad Blood three of them reached number one on the Hot 100. At the 2016 Grammys it won Album of the Year, making her the first woman to win that award twice.

Alexis Petridis wrote in the Guardian that she has a neat line in twisting cliches until they sound original. In July 2014 she published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and in November her catalogue came off ad-supported streaming services such as Spotify, returning in June 2017. The 1989 World Tour grossed over $250 million, the most of any tour in 2015. Reputation followed on November 10, 2017, and Lover, her first album for Republic Records, on August 23, 2019.

Folklore and Evermore

In 2020 she changed course. Folklore was surprise-released on July 24, made in isolation during lockdown with Aaron Dessner of the National and with Antonoff. Swift recorded her vocals at her Los Angeles home studio while Dessner worked from Long Pond Studio in the Hudson Valley, and the first song they wrote together was Cardigan. The album spent eight weeks at number one and won Album of the Year at the 2021 Grammys, making her the first woman to win that award three times.

She and Dessner kept writing, and Evermore followed on December 11, 2020. Swift conceived it as a sister record to Folklore. Dessner produced 14 tracks of the standard edition, and Haim, the National and Bon Iver appear as featured artists. Willow opened the album and debuted at number one, in the same week as the album, just as Cardigan and Folklore had. Pitchfork's Sam Sodomsky wrote that the album holds "the closest things to country music she has written in years". Marjorie samples the soprano vocals of the opera singer Marjorie Finlay.

Since

Swift released re-recorded versions of Fearless, Red, Speak Now and 1989 between 2021 and 2023. Midnights came out on October 21, 2022, produced with Antonoff, and won her a fourth Album of the Year Grammy in 2024, a record. Its songs filled the entire top 10 of the Hot 100 in one week. The Eras Tour ran from March 2023 to December 2024 and was the first tour to gross $1 billion, finishing with $2 billion in revenue. The Tortured Poets Department followed on April 19, 2024, and The Life of a Showgirl on October 3, 2025. In 2026 the Library of Congress selected 1989 for preservation in the National Recording Registry.