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Taylor Swift
 Taylor
Swift was born in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania and is the daughter of Scott
and Andrea Swift, a stock broker dad and stay at home mom. When
she was in fourth grade, she won a national poetry contest with a
three-page long poem entitled "Monster In My Closet" At
the age of ten, Swift began to perform around her home town, singing at
karaoke contests, festivals, and fairs, and also started writing
songs.
Swift's singing
influences include her grandmother and LeAnn Rimes. Although her
grandmother was a professional opera singer,
Taylor's tastes always ran more toward pop and country music.
At age eleven, Swift made her first trip
to Nashville hoping to obtain a record deal by distributing a demo tape
of her singing with karaoke songs. She gave a copy to every label on
Music Row. Swift faced rejection, but did not give up. After Swift
returned to Pennsylvania, she was asked to sing at the U.S. Open tennis
tournament. Her rendition of the national anthem received a lot of
attention.
Taylor started writing songs and playing
the guitar when she was twelve. She began to regularly visit Nashville
and wrote songs with local songwriters. By the time she was fourteen,
her family decided to move to the Nashville area. When Swift was
fifteen, she rejected a development deal with RCA Records because the
company refused to allow her to record her own songs. Swift then
performed at Nashville's songwriters' venue, The Bluebird Café,
catching the attention of Scott Borchetta who signed her to his
newly-formed record label, Big Machine Records. She also became the
youngest staff songwriter ever hired by the Sony publishing house.
Swift's first single, "Tim
McGraw", was released to radio in Summer of 2006 and on October 24,
2006, her self-titled album was released. Swift has surpassed the 179
million mark for music streams on MySpace. She is currently ranked in
the Top 10 for the most MySpace visits for all genres of music, and is
MySpace's current top-ranking Country artist. Swift was the most
searched musical artist on MySpace in 2008.
The following year Taylor released other
popular singles including "Teardrops on My Guitar," "Our
Song." Swift was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the category
of Best New Artist, but lost to Amy Winehouse. Swift's successful
single, "Picture to Burn" was the fourth single from her debut
album.
Swift's latest studio album, Fearless,
was released in the United States on in November 2008. The album debuted
at #1 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart. Its sales of 592,304 was the
highest debut of any country artists in 2008. This is also the largest
opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of
music, and the fourth biggest overall behind Lil Wayne, AC/DC and
Coldplay. Its lead single "Love Story" became a hit on both
the country and pop charts.
In its debut week, seven songs in total
on Fearless were charted on Billboard Hot 100, tying Swift with Hannah
Montana for the most by a female artist in a single week. With
"White Horse" charted at #13, this gave Swift her sixth top 20
debut of 2008, a calendar year record for any artist in the history of
the Billboard Hot 100. Of the 13 tracks on Fearless, 11 have already
spent time on the Hot 100.
The song "Love Story" has
reached number 2 on iTunes Store Top Downloaded Songs also became the
first country crossover recording to hit number one on the Nielsen Top
40 chart in the 16-year-history of list, as well as number 1 on the
Mediabase Top 40 Chart.
Swift is Billboard's Top Country Artist
and Hot Country Songwriter of 2008; she is also country music's
best-selling artist of 2008.
Congratulations to Taylor Swift, for
being chosen our latest Artist Spot-Lite on LiteFavorites.com! Listen
for Taylor and other soft hits, with less talk all day at work.
Congratulations to Taylor
Swift, for being
chosen our latest Artist Spot-Lite on LiteFavorites.com! Listen
for Taylor and other soft hits, with less talk all day at work.
Click here for our previous Artist Spot-Lite Charlie Farren & Candy
O'Terry.
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