Early Life
Taylor Alison Swift grew up in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, and began performing and writing songs as a child. At 14 she moved with her family to the Nashville area to pursue a country music career, and she signed with Big Machine Records in 2005.
Career
Her self-titled debut album arrived in 2006. Fearless (2008) made her a star and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and Speak Now (2010) and Red (2012) followed. She moved fully into pop with 1989 (2014), then released Reputation (2017), Lover (2019), and the pandemic-era folk albums Folklore and Evermore (2020). Midnights (2022) and The Tortured Poets Department (2024) extended her run of chart-topping releases, and The Life of a Showgirl followed in 2025.
After a dispute over the ownership of her first six albums' master recordings, she began re-recording them as “Taylor's Version” in 2021, and in 2025 she announced she had bought the original masters back. The Eras Tour (2023–2024) became the highest-grossing concert tour in history and was released as a concert film.
Legacy
Swift is the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year four times (Fearless, 1989, Folklore and Midnights). Time magazine named her its Person of the Year in 2023. Her tours and her public fight over master recordings have shaped conversations about artists' rights and the economics of the music industry.
Sources and further reading
Last updated: 2026-09-24