Taylor Swift
79,968,374 monthly listeners
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Popular releases
Lavender Haze (Felix Jaehn Remix)Latest Release • Album
Midnights2022 • Album
Midnights (3am Edition)2022 • Album
Lover2019 • Album
reputation2017 • Album
Red (Taylor's Version)2021 • Album
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79,968,374 monthly listeners
Taylor Swift is that rarest of pop phenomena: a
superstar who managed to completely cross over
from country to the mainstream. Others have
performed similar moves -- notably,
Dolly Parton
and
Willie Nelson
both became enduring pop culture icons based on
their 1970s work -- but Swift shed her country
roots like they were a second skin; it was a
necessary molting to reveal she was perhaps the
sharpest, savviest populist singer/songwriter of
her generation, one who could harness the
zeitgeist, make it personal and, just as
impressively, perform the reverse. These skills
were evident on her earliest hits, especially the
neo-tribute "Tim McGraw," but her second
album, 2008's Fearless, showcased a
songwriter discovering who she was and, in the
process, finding a mass audience. Fearless wound
up having considerable legs not only in the U.S.,
where it racked up six platinum singles on the
strength of the Top Ten hits "Love
Story" and "You Belong with Me,"
but throughout the world, performing particularly
well in the U.K., Canada, and Australia. Speak
Now, delivered almost two years later,
consolidated that success and moved Swift into the
stratosphere of superstardom. Her popularity only
increased over her next three albums -- Red
(2012), 1989 (2014), Reputation (2017) -- and
found her moving assuredly into a pop realm where
she already belonged. Even when she scaled back
her approach with 2020's stripped-down
sibling releases folklore and Evermore, she
remained atop the pop world, a position she
maintained with re-recordings of her back catalog
along with Midnights, a moody album released in
2022. This sense of confidence had been apparent
in Taylor Swift since the beginning. The daughter
of two bankers -- her father, Scott Kingsley
Swift, worked at Merrill Lynch; her mother,
Andrea, spent time as a mutual fund marketing
executive -- Swift was born in Reading,
Pennsylvania, and raised in suburban Wyomissing.
She began to show interest in music at the age of
nine, and
Shania Twain
wound up as her biggest formative influence. Swift
started to work regularly at local talent
contests, eventually winning a chance to open for
Charlie Daniels. Soon, she learned how to play guitar and began
writing songs, signing a music management deal
with Dan Dymtrow; her family relocated to
Nashville with the intent of furthering her music
career. She was just 14 years old but on the radar
of the music industry, signing a development deal
with
RCA Records
in 2004. Swift sharpened her skills with a variety
of professional songwriters, forming the strongest
connections with
Liz Rose. Taylor's original songs earned her a deal
with Sony/ATV Music Publishing, but not long after
that 2004 deal she parted ways with Dymtrow and
RCA, all with the intent of launching her recording
career now, not later. Things started moving
swiftly once Swift came to the attention of Scott
Borchetta, a former
DreamWorks Records
exec about to launch
Big Machine Records. Borchetta saw Swift perform at a songwriters
showcase at the Bluebird Cafe and he signed her to
Big Machine
in 2005; shortly afterward, she started work on
her debut with producer Nathan Chapman, who'd
previously helmed demos for Taylor. Boasting
original song credits on every one of the
record's 11 songs (she penned three on her
own), Taylor Swift appeared in October 2006 to
strong reviews and Swift made sure to work the
album hard, appearing at every radio or television
event offered and marshaling a burgeoning fan base
through the use of MySpace. "Tim
McGraw," the first song from the album, did
well, but "Teardrops on My Guitar" and
"Our Song" did better on both the pop
and country charts, where she racked up five
consecutive Top Ten singles. Other successes
followed in the wake of the debut -- a Grammy
nomination for Best New Artist (she lost to
Amy Winehouse), stopgap EPs of Christmas songs -- but Swift
concentrated on delivering her sophomore set,
Fearless. Appearing in November 2008, Fearless was
certified gold by the RIAA in its first week of
release, and the record gained momentum throughout
2009, earning several platinum certifications as
"Love Story," "White Horse,"
"You Belong with Me,"
"Fifteen," and "Fearless" all
scaled the upper reaches of the country charts
while "You Belong with Me" nearly topped
Billboard's Hot 100. Along with the success
came some headlines, first in the form of an
infamous appearance at the 2009 MTV Video Music
Awards where her acceptance speech was interrupted
by
Kanye West, who burst on-stage to declare that Swift's
rival
Beyoncé
deserved the award more, but her romances also
started gaining attention, notably a liaison with
Twilight star Taylor Lautner, who appeared with
the singer in the 2009 film Valentine's Day.
Her flirtation with the silver screen proved
brief, as she then poured herself into her third
album, Speak Now. Released in October 2010, Speak
Now was another massive first-week smash that
refused to lose momentum. Hit singles like
"Mine" and "Mean," which won
two Grammy Awards, played a big factor in its
success not just on the country charts but on pop
radio as well. Following a 2011 live album called
World Tour Live: Speak Now, Swift turned toward
following a pop path on her fourth album, hiring
such mainstream musicians as
Dan Wilson,
Butch Walker, and
Britney Spears
producer
Max Martin. This mainstream pulse was evident on "We
Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," the
first single from Red. Upon its October 2012
release, Red shattered expectations by selling
over a million copies in its first week, a notable
achievement that was doubly impressive in an era
of declining sales. Once again, Swift's album
had legs: it was certified platinum four times in
the U.S. and its international sales outstripped
those of Speak Now. She supported Red with an
international tour in 2013 and more hits came,
including "I Knew You Were Trouble" and
"22." As Swift geared up for the release
of her fifth album in 2014, she made it clear that
1989 was designed as her first "documented,
official" pop album and that there would be
no country marketing push for the record.
"Shake It Off," an ebullient dance-pop
throwback, hit number one upon its August 2014
release. When 1989 appeared in late October 2014,
it once again shot to number one and became her
third straight album to sell one million copies in
its first week (a new record for any artist).
Swift gathered many awards during the subsequent
year, including Billboard's Woman of the
Year, the Award for Excellence at the American
Music Awards, and a special 50th Anniversary
Milestone Award from the CMAs. Her 1989 World Tour
crossed Asia, North America, and Europe during the
last half of 2015, and she won three Grammy Awards
at the 2016 ceremonies, including Album of the
Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, and Best Music Video
for "Bad Blood." At the end of 2016, she
released "I Don't Wanna Live
Forever," a duet with ZAYN from the
soundtrack for Fifty Shades Darker. The single
reached the Top Five across the world. Swift
returned with her sixth album, Reputation, in
November 2017. Preceded by the number one hit
single "Look What You Made Me Do,"
Reputation debuted at number one, and while it
didn't replicate the success of 1989, the
album did help underscore her popularity while
also pushing her toward mature musicality.
Reputation was Swift's final record for
Big Machine. In November 2018, she signed with
Universal Music Group, which distributed her new albums under its
Republic Records
banner. The first album in this contract was
Lover. Released in August 2019, Lover was preceded
by two singles, "Me!" and "You Need
to Calm Down," which both reached number two
on the Hot 100 and helped push the album to number
one. The acclaimed LP and two of its singles
received a total of three nominations at the 62nd
Grammy Awards. Swift's plans to support Lover
with a tour in 2020 were scrapped due to the
COVID-19 pandemic. With some unexpected time on
her hands, she wrote and recorded a new set of
songs, many in collaboration with
Aaron Dessner
of
the National;
Bon Iver
and longtime Swift associate
Jack Antonoff
also contributed. The resulting album, folklore,
was released on July 24, 2020, and went straight
to the top of the Billboard 200. Less than five
months later, Swift released a companion album to
folklore called Evermore. Featuring many of the
same collaborators as its predecessor, the
Grammy-nominated Evermore debuted at number one
upon its December 11, 2020 release. Altogether,
the sibling LPs planted Swift atop the U.S. charts
for a combined 11 weeks, and folklore became the
best-selling album of 2020. In 2021, she began the
process of re-recording her back catalog after her
Big Machine
masters were sold off in 2019, starting with
2008's Fearless. The first of these tracks --
"Love Story (Taylor's Version)" --
arrived that February, with Fearless
[Taylor's Version] arriving in April. The new
version of Fearless contained cameos from
Colbie Caillat,
Keith Urban, and
Maren Morris, along with several previously unheard tunes
originally written during the same time period; it
debuted at number one on Billboard upon its
release. Swift next revisited Red, releasing Red
[Taylor's Version] in November 2021. This
revamp of the 2012 album featured new duets with
Phoebe Bridgers,
Chris Stapleton, and
Ed Sheeran, along with a ten-minute version of the ballad
"All Too Well." Another re-recording,
"This Love (Taylor's Version)"
(originally off 1989), arrived in May 2022 and was
included in the soundtrack to the coming-of-age
drama The Summer I Turned Pretty. Swift opened up
another chapter in her career with the October
2022 release of Midnights, an album co-produced by
Jack Antonoff
and featuring a duet with
Lana Del Rey
on "Snow on the Beach." ~ Stephen Thomas
Erlewine
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