Taylor Swift

In Nashville, Swift collaborated with seasoned Music Row songwriters, including Troy Verges, Brett Beavers, and Liz Rose, with whom she formed a lasting partnership. They held weekly writing sessions, where Rose primarily served as an editor, helping refine Swift’s natural storytelling abilities. At 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by Sony/ATV Tree Music Publishing but left RCA Records due to concerns over artistic control and the potential shelving of her music. Determined to capture her teenage years in song, she sought a label that would support her vision.

In 2005, during a showcase at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, Swift caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, who was launching Big Machine Records. She became one of the label’s first signees, with her father purchasing a small stake in the company. Teaming up with producer Nathan Chapman, Swift wrote or co-wrote all the tracks for her self-titled debut album, released in October 2006. The album peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and remained on the chart for 157 weeks, the longest of any album in the 2000s. She made history as the first female country artist to write or co-write every track on a platinum-certified debut album.

The lead single, Tim McGraw, was promoted extensively by Swift and her mother, followed by a radio tour. Additional singles—Teardrops on My Guitar, Our Song, Picture to Burn, and Should’ve Said No—all performed well on country charts, with Our Song making her the youngest artist to write and perform a number-one hit on Hot Country Songs. Her crossover appeal grew as Teardrops on My Guitar gained traction on mainstream radio.

Swift further promoted her album by opening for country stars like Rascal Flatts, George Strait, and Brad Paisley. She released two EPs, The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007) and Beautiful Eyes (2008), expanding her reach. Her success earned her numerous accolades, including the Nashville Songwriters Association’s Songwriter/Artist of the Year award, the CMA Horizon Award for Best New Artist, and the ACM’s Top New Female Vocalist honor. She also received a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. In 2008, she continued touring with Rascal Flatts and briefly dated Joe Jonas.

Swift released her second studio album, Fearless, in November 2008 in North America and in March 2009 globally. The album topped the Billboard 200 for 11 weeks, making it her first number-one album and the longest-running chart-topper by a female country artist. It was also the best-selling album of 2009 in the U.S. Fearless produced multiple hit singles, including Love Story—her first number-one in Australia and the first country song to top Billboard‘s Pop Songs chart—and You Belong with Me, which became the first country song to lead the all-genre Radio Songs chart. Other singles like White Horse, Fifteen, and Fearless also achieved top 10 positions on the Hot Country Songs chart. In 2009, Swift opened for Keith Urban before launching her first headlining tour, the Fearless Tour.

At the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, You Belong with Me won Best Female Video, but Swift’s acceptance speech was famously interrupted by Kanye West, sparking a major media controversy. That year, she won five American Music Awards, including Artist of the Year and Favorite Country Album, and was named Billboard‘s Artist of the Year. She also won Video of the Year for Love Story at the CMT Music Awards, where she collaborated with T-Pain on the parody Thug Story. At the 52nd Grammy Awards, Fearless won Album of the Year and Best Country Album, while White Horse earned Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Swift also became the youngest artist to win Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards.

Beyond her own music, Swift collaborated with other artists in 2009. She featured on Half of My Heart by John Mayer, co-wrote Best Days of Your Life for Kellie Pickler, and worked with Boys Like Girls on Two Is Better Than One. She also contributed two songs—You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home and Crazier—to Hannah Montana: The Movie, in which she made a cameo appearance. In 2010, she wrote and recorded Today Was a Fairytale for Valentine’s Day, marking her first number-one song on the Canadian Hot 100 and her film acting debut. That year, she briefly dated co-star Taylor Lautner.

Swift also explored television, guest-starring as a rebellious teen on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and hosting Saturday Night Live as both host and musical guest—becoming the first host to write their own monologue.

Swift released her third studio album, Speak Now, in October 2010. Written entirely by Swift, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling over one million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling digital album by a female artist at the time. It featured six singles, including Mine, Back to December, Mean, The Story of Us, Sparks Fly, and Ours. Mine peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, while Sparks Fly and Ours topped the Hot Country Songs chart. Swift supported the album with the Speak Now World Tour (2011–2012) and released a live album, Speak Now World Tour – Live.

At the 54th Grammy Awards, Mean won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. Swift was named Songwriter/Artist of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association (2010, 2011), Billboard‘s Woman of the Year (2011), and Entertainer of the Year by both the Academy of Country Music (2011, 2012) and the Country Music Association (2011). She also won Artist of the Year and Favorite Country Album at the 2011 American Music Awards. In 2012, Rolling Stone listed Speak Now among the “50 Best Female Albums of All Time.”

Swift’s fourth studio album, Red, arrived in October 2012, marking a shift toward pop with influences from Britrock, dubstep, and dance-pop. Collaborating with producers like Max Martin and Shellback, Swift achieved her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single with We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 1.21 million sales and became her first UK number-one album. Other major singles included I Knew You Were Trouble, Begin Again, 22, Everything Has Changed, The Last Time, and Red.

Red and its single Begin Again earned three nominations at the 56th Grammy Awards. Swift won multiple accolades, including Best Female Country Artist at the 2012 American Music Awards and Artist of the Year in 2013. She also received the Pinnacle Award at the 2014 Country Music Association Awards, becoming its second-ever recipient after Garth Brooks. The Red Tour (2013–2014) became the highest-grossing country tour upon its conclusion.

Beyond her albums, Swift contributed music to films and collaborated with other artists. She wrote and recorded Eyes Open and Safe & Sound for The Hunger Games (2012), winning a Grammy for Best Song Written for Visual Media for the latter. She also co-wrote Sweeter than Fiction with Jack Antonoff for One Chance (2013) and featured on B.o.B’s Both of Us (2012) and Tim McGraw’s Highway Don’t Care (2013). As an actress, she voiced a character in The Lorax (2012), made a cameo in New Girl (2013), and had a supporting role in The Giver (2014).

Between 2010 and 2013, Swift was romantically linked with Jake Gyllenhaal, Conor Kennedy, and Harry Styles.

In March 2014, Swift moved to New York City, which inspired her fifth studio album, 1989. Describing it as her first “official pop album,” Swift collaborated with Jack Antonoff, Max Martin, Shellback, Imogen Heap, Ryan Tedder, and Ali Payami. Released in October 2014, 1989 debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 1.28 million sales. Its singles Shake It Off, Blank Space, and Bad Blood topped the charts in the US, Australia, and Canada, with the first two making Swift the first woman to replace herself at number one on the Hot 100. Other singles included Style, Wildest Dreams, Out of the Woods, and New Romantics. The 1989 World Tour (2015) grossed $250 million, making it the highest-grossing tour of the year.

Swift advocated for artists’ rights by removing her music from ad-supported streaming platforms in 2014 and later challenging Apple Music’s free-trial policy in 2015, prompting the company to revise its policies. In June 2017, her catalog returned to streaming services. Swift was named Billboard‘s Woman of the Year in 2014, the first artist to win the award twice. She received the inaugural Dick Clark Award for Excellence at the 2014 American Music Awards and won the Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist in 2015. 1989 won Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 58th Grammy Awards (2016), making Swift the first woman to win Album of the Year twice.

From 2015 to 2016, Swift dated DJ Calvin Harris and co-wrote This Is What You Came For, initially under the pseudonym Nils Sjöberg. She collaborated with Zayn Malik on I Don’t Wanna Live Forever for Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and won a Country Music Association Award for Better Man, written for Little Big Town. Swift was involved in controversy after Kanye West’s song Famous (2016) referenced her in a derogatory lyric. West claimed Swift had approved the line, but Swift denied it, leading to a public feud and online backlash. After briefly dating Tom Hiddleston, she began a six-year relationship with Joe Alwyn in late 2016 and retreated from the public eye.

In 2017, Swift won a countersuit against radio DJ David Mueller, who had sued her for defamation after she accused him of sexual assault. These events influenced her sixth studio album, Reputation (2017), which explored fame and backlash through electropop, hip-hop, and R&B elements. The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 1.21 million sales, topping charts in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. Its lead single, Look What You Made Me Do, became her first UK number-one hit and topped multiple international charts. Other singles included …Ready for It?, End Game, and Delicate. Reputation was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the Grammys.

At the 2018 American Music Awards, Swift won four awards, bringing her total to 23 and surpassing Whitney Houston as the AMAs’ most-awarded female artist. She embarked on the Reputation Stadium Tour (2018), which grossed $345.7 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing North American tour in history.

In November 2018, Swift signed a new deal with Universal Music Group, placing her subsequent albums under Republic Records while ensuring she retained ownership of her masters. The contract also included a provision requiring Universal to share proceeds from any sale of its Spotify stake with artists.

Swift’s first album with Republic Records, Lover (2019), was produced alongside Jack Antonoff, Louis Bell, Frank Dukes, and Joel Little. It topped the charts in multiple countries, including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. The album featured five singles: Me!, You Need to Calm Down, Lover, The Man, and Cruel Summer—the latter became a resurgent hit in 2023, reaching number one. Lover was the best-selling album of 2019 in the US and the highest-selling album by a solo artist globally. It received three nominations at the 62nd Grammy Awards. At the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, Swift won three awards, including Video of the Year for You Need to Calm Down, becoming the first female artist to win the category for a self-directed video.

During Lover‘s promotion, Swift became involved in a dispute with talent manager Scooter Braun, who acquired Big Machine Records, including the masters of her early albums. Swift stated she had tried to buy the masters but was only offered a deal that required her to exchange one new album for each older one. Refusing the terms, she began re-recording her catalog in November 2020, allowing her to regain control over her music’s licensing.

In February 2020, after her contract with Sony/ATV expired, Swift signed a global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she surprise-released two albums, Folklore (July 2020) and Evermore (December 2020), recorded with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner. Joe Alwyn contributed under the pseudonym William Bowery. Both albums embraced an indie folk sound, and each was supported by three singles: Cardigan, Betty, and Exile from Folklore, and Willow, No Body, No Crime, and Coney Island from Evermore. Folklore was the best-selling US album of 2020, and with Cardigan, Swift became the first artist to debut a US number-one album and single in the same week—an achievement she repeated with Evermore and Willow.

Swift was the highest-paid musician in the US and the highest-paid solo artist worldwide in 2020, according to Billboard. Folklore won Album of the Year at the 63rd Grammy Awards, making Swift the first woman to win the award three times. She also won Artist of the Year at the 2020 American Music Awards, marking her third win in the category, and received Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist and Favorite Pop/Rock Album in 2021.

Beyond music, Swift played Bombalurina in Cats (2019), co-writing and recording the Golden Globe-nominated song Beautiful Ghosts for the film. In 2020, the documentary Miss Americana, chronicling aspects of her career and personal life, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Swift’s re-recordings of her first six studio albums began with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version), released in April and November 2021. Both topped the Billboard 200, with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) becoming the first re-recorded album to do so. Its lead single, Love Story (Taylor’s Version), made Swift the second artist after Dolly Parton to have both the original and re-recorded versions of a song reach number one on Hot Country Songs. Red (Taylor’s Version) was highlighted by All Too Well (10 Minute Version), which became the longest song in history to top the Billboard Hot 100.

Swift’s tenth studio album, Midnights, was released in October 2022, featuring a restrained electropop and synth-pop sound with elements of hip hop, R&B, and electronica. In the US, it became her fifth album to debut atop the Billboard 200 with first-week sales exceeding one million copies. Its lead single, Anti-Hero, helped Swift become the first artist to monopolize the entire top 10 of the Hot 100. Globally, Midnights broke records for the most single-day and single-week streams on Spotify and topped charts in at least 14 countries. The album’s other singles, Lavender Haze and Karma, both peaked at number two on the Hot 100.

In 2021, Billboard ranked Swift as the highest-earning solo artist in the US and the top-earning musician worldwide. She won six American Music Awards in 2022, including Artist of the Year. At the MTV Video Music Awards, she won Video of the Year for All Too Well: The Short Film in 2022 and for Anti-Hero in 2023. She also won three Grammy Awards, including Best Music Video for All Too Well: The Short Film, and Best Pop Vocal Album and Album of the Year for Midnights, making her the first artist in Grammy history to win Album of the Year four times.

Her next two re-recorded albums, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version), were released in July and October 2023. The former made Swift the woman with the most number-one albums (12) in Billboard 200 history, surpassing Barbra Streisand, while the latter marked her sixth album to sell over one million copies in a single week in the US, also achieving her career’s largest album sales week. 1989 (Taylor’s Version)‘s single, Is It Over Now?, debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Swift also featured on Renegade and Birch (2021) with Big Red Machine, Gasoline (2021) with Haim, The Joker and the Queen (2022) with Ed Sheeran, and The Alcott (2023) with The National. She contributed Carolina for the Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) soundtrack, earning nominations for Best Original Song at the Golden Globes and Best Song Written for Visual Media at the Grammys. She also had a supporting role in the 2022 period comedy film Amsterdam.

In 2023, Swift was the most streamed artist on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. She became the first act to rank number one on Billboard‘s year-end top artists list in three different decades (2009, 2015, and 2023) and held five of the 10 best-selling albums of 2023 in the US—the most since Luminate began tracking US music sales in 1991.

In March 2023, Swift embarked on The Eras Tour, a retrospective tour covering all her studio albums. The tour’s cultural and economic impact was widely covered, and its U.S. leg broke the record for the most tickets sold in a single day. Ticketmaster faced significant public and political backlash over its mishandling of ticket sales. The Eras Tour became the highest-grossing tour in history. Its concert film, released worldwide on October 13, 2023, grossed over $250 million, becoming the highest-grossing concert film ever and earning a Golden Globe nomination for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. A photobook, The Official Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Book, was released on November 29, 2024, selling over a million copies in its first week in the U.S. alone.

Swift’s eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, was released on April 19, 2024, topping charts globally and setting multiple records. It became the first album to reach 1 billion Spotify streams in a week, sold 2.6 million units in its first week in the U.S., and made Swift the first artist to dominate the top 14 of the Billboard Hot 100 and the top 10 of Australia’s ARIA Singles Chart. The album spent 17 weeks atop the Billboard 200, marking Swift’s longest-running number-one album. Its lead single, Fortnight featuring Post Malone, became her 12th number-one song on the Hot 100.

From 2023 onward, Swift’s music releases, touring, and related activities propelled her to unprecedented levels of success. The combined impact of her re-recordings, The Eras Tour, its concert film, Midnights, and The Tortured Poets Department significantly increased her net worth, with Music Business Worldwide describing this as a “new stratosphere of global career success.” In 2023, Swift began dating American football player Travis Kelce. She won Artist of the Year at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards and was once again Spotify’s most streamed artist in 2024.

In January 2024, AI-generated fake pornographic images of Swift spread across social media, sparking widespread criticism and calls for legal reform. In July, she and Kelce received death threats from a stalker in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. That same month, three children were killed in a stabbing attack at a Swift-themed workshop in Southport, England, leading to civil unrest in the UK. In August, all three of The Eras Tour concerts in Vienna were canceled following the arrest of two suspects accused of planning an Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack. The plot was uncovered by U.S. intelligence and foiled by Austrian authorities.

Wealth and philanthropy

Swift became a billionaire in October 2023, making history as the first musician to achieve billionaire status solely through her songs and performances. As of October 2024, Forbes estimates her net worth at $1.6 billion, solidifying her position as the world’s richest female musician and one of the wealthiest celebrities. Forbes had previously named her the top-earning female musician in 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2022. She was the highest-paid celebrity of 2016 with $170 million—a record recognized by Guinness World Records for the highest annual earnings by a female musician, which she surpassed with $185 million in 2019. Over the 2010s, Swift earned $825 million, making her the highest-paid female artist of the decade. She has also built a $150 million real estate portfolio with properties in Nashville, New York City, Los Angeles (Samuel Goldwyn Estate), and Rhode Island (High Watch).

Swift has a long history of philanthropy. She ranked first on DoSomething’s 2015 Gone Good list and has received multiple honors for her charitable efforts. Early in her career, she donated to disaster relief, including $100,000 to the Red Cross for the 2008 Iowa floods, performing at Sydney’s Sound Relief concert in 2009, and raising over $750,000 through a Speak Now tour benefit concert for tornado victims. She also donated $500,000 for Tennessee flood relief in 2010, contributed to BBC’s Children in Need, and supported Louisiana flood victims in 2016 with a $1 million donation. Her disaster relief efforts continued with donations for Hurricane Harvey (2017), Tennessee tornadoes (2020, 2023), and $5 million toward relief efforts for Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in 2024.

Swift has also supported cancer research, donating $25,000 to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, $100,000 to the V Foundation for Cancer Research, and $50,000 to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She wrote and performed Ronan for the Stand Up to Cancer telethon, inspired by a young boy who died of neuroblastoma. She has also provided financial assistance to fans for medical and academic expenses. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she donated to the World Health Organization, Feeding America, and supported independent record stores. She also performed Soon You’ll Get Better as part of One World: Together at Home, a benefit concert curated by Lady Gaga.

A strong supporter of the arts, Swift has donated $75,000 to refurbish the auditorium of Nashville’s Hendersonville High School, $4 million to build an education center at the Country Music Hall of Fame, and $100,000 to the Nashville Symphony. She has also funded music departments in six U.S. colleges through a partnership with Chegg for Good.

Swift’s charitable giving extends to social causes. She has donated to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month and contributed to Kesha’s legal battle against Dr. Luke. She also supports Mariska Hargitay’s Joyful Heart Foundation and encourages youth volunteerism through Global Youth Service Day. As a proponent of children’s literacy, she has donated books and funds to schools nationwide.

During The Eras Tour, Swift made multiple donations to food banks in Florida, Arizona, and Las Vegas, supported local businesses, and gave $197 million in bonuses to her tour crew. In February 2024, she donated $100,000 to the family of a woman killed in a shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade. In December 2024, she contributed $250,000 to Operation Breakthrough to support workforce development, childcare, and early learning programs.