Taylor Swift has come a long way since starting out as a young hopeful in Tennessee. On Sunday (20.11.22), she became the most awarded artist in the history of the American Music Awards with a total of 40 gongs now to her name! Take a look through to find out more about her incredible journey…
On Sunday (20.11.22), she became the most awarded artist in the history of the American Music Awards with a total of 40 gongs now to her name!
Take a look through to find out more about her incredible journey…
From Pennsylvania to Tennessee…
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989 in Pennsylvania and by the age of nine she became interested in performing after attending a production of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ at a local theatre. Soon, she was inspired by a Faith Hill documentary to visit Tennessee with the hopes of pursuing a music career and travelled with her mother on a regular basis to produce demo tape covers of songs made famous by Dolly Parton.
Taught guitar my a repairman?
As Taylor approached her teenage years, she was performing in local clubs and bars honing her craft. She had attempted to play the guitar a few years earlier but gave up after finding it too difficult to master, until a “twist of fate” came along. She said: “I was doing my homework [when the tech fixing my computer] looked over and saw the guitar in the corner. And he said, ‘Do you play guitar?’ I said, ‘Oh. No. I tried, but…’ He said, ‘Do you want me to teach you a few chords?’ And I said, ‘Uh, yeah. YES!'”
Career beginnings
At the age of 14, Taylor became the youngest artist ever to be signed by RCA Records but left pretty soon after over a “lack of care” provided by industry executives. Around this time, Taylor embarked on several regular song writing sessions with country star Liz Rose. She later recalled: “Basically, I was just her editor. She’d write about what happened in school that day. She had such a clear vision of what she was trying to say. And she’d come in with the most incredible hooks.”
Big break at Big Machine
It was in 2004 that the then 15-year-old was spotted by Scott Borchetta, a DreamWorks Records executive who was preparing to form an independent record label, Big Machine Records. She was signed to the label and her father, an investment broker, purchased a stake in the company thought to be worth $120,000. Her debut self-titled album was released the following year and it peaked at number five on the US Billboard 200, where it went on to spend 157 weeks.
Fearless
Hot on the heels of her 2006 debut, Taylor began work on her second studio album ‘Fearless’, choosing the title after making a comparison between the “fearless” nature of love and that of her career ambitions. ‘Fearless’ won Album of the Year at both the Country Music Association Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards in 2009. At the 2010 Grammy Awards, it won Album of the Year and Best Country Album.
‘It’s about Reputation’
Taylor continued to release albums every other year until 2014, when a wait of three years occurred before ‘Reputation’ dropped. Taylor has dated the likes of Harry Styles, Jake Gyllenhaal and Calvin Harris and is now in a relationship with Joe Alwyn, and is well known for writing songs about the ups and downs of her personal life. Ahead of Reputation’s release, Taylor decided not to explain anything, refusing to conduct interviews for the record. She said: “At the very beginning of the album I was pretty proud of coining the term, ‘There will be no explanation. There will just be ‘Reputation”, and so that was what I decided was going to be the album, and I stuck with it. I didn’t go back on it. I didn’t try to explain the album because I didn’t feel that I owed that to anyone. There was a lot that happened over a couple of years that made me feel really, really terrible. And I didn’t feel like expressing that to them. I didn’t feel like talking about it. I just felt like making music, then going out on the road and doing a stadium tour and doing everything I could for my fans.” The follow up stadium tour became the highest-selling in the US ever and Taylor claimed that the album needed to be seen live in order to be “understood.”
Best friends
Taylor is best friends with fellow pop star and former Disney Channel actress Selena Gomez. The pair recently celebrated Selena’s 30th birthday together and she later admitted that Taylor is her only showbusiness friend. She said: “My only friend in the industry really is Taylor (Swift), so I remember feeling like I didn’t belong.”
Taylor’s Versions
Around the time she was riding high on ‘Reputation’ and its follow albums ‘Lover’, ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’, Taylor became embroiled in a public dispute with talent manager Scooter Braun and Big Machine over the purchase of the masters of her back catalogue. Taylor claimed she had been trying to buy the rights to her first six albums, but would only be granted permission to do so if exchanged one new album for each older one under another contract, which she refused to do. Ultimately, Taylor decided to re-record her first six albums with the subtitle Taylor’s Version. After learning that ‘All Too Well (Taylor’s Version) had received a nomination for a Grammy Award in 2023, she cried for “10 minutes straight”.
Taylor calls out Ticketmaster
After announcing the ‘Eras’ stadium tour, fans complained that they were having difficulty accessing Ticketmaster to purchase tickets and Taylor took it upon herself to speak to her fans directly regarding the issue. She said: “There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.”
A new record for Taylor
If having 10 studio albums under her belt – as well as 11 Grammys – wasn’t enough, Taylor now has a new record as the most-awarded artist in the history of the American Music Awards, with 40 gongs to her name. The pop megastar won the biggest prize of the night, Artist of the Year, for the seventh time and her re-recorded ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ was crowned Favourite Pop Album and Favourite Country Album. Taylor’s music video for ‘All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)’. The ‘Shake It Off’ hitmaker was also named Favourite Female Pop Artist and Female Country Artist. In her speech on Sunday (20.11.22), she said: “The past few years, I have released more music than I did in the decade preceding that. “I really feel like that’s down to the fact that you, the fans, made it clear that you wanted to hear lots of music… I found that the more music I made [and] the more music I put out, the happier I was.”
Source: Bang Showbiz
