Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed with the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest songwriter ever signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift's self-titled debut album in 2006 marked the start of her career as a country music singer. Her third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Hot Country Songs chart.
Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008. Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", Fearless became the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States. The album won four Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the youngest Album of the Year winner. Swift penned every track of her Speak Now (2010) album without any co-writers. It debuted at number-one in the United States and the single "Mean" won two Grammy Awards. Swift's fourth album Red (2012) yielded the successful singles "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and "I Knew You Were Trouble". Her fifth album, the pop-focused 1989 (2014) earned a Guinness World Record after it became her third consecutive album to sell a million copies in its first week in the US. Its singles "Shake It Off", "Blank Space" and "Bad Blood" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The album received three Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the first woman and fifth person overall to win Album of the Year award twice. The eponymous concert tour for the album, running in 2015, became one of highest-grossing of all time.
Swift is known for narrative songs about her personal experiences. As a songwriter, she has been honored by the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Swift's other achievements include ten Grammy Awards, five Guinness World Records, one Emmy Award, 23 Billboard Music Awards, 11 Country Music Association Awards, eight Academy of Country Music Awards and one Brit Award. She is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums—including 27.1 million in the U.S.—and 130 million single downloads. She has appeared in Time's 100 most influential people in the world (2010 and 2015), Forbes' top-earning women in music (2011–15), Forbes' 100 most powerful women (2015) and Forbes Celebrity 100 (2016). She was the youngest woman to be included in the third of these and ranked first in the latter. In addition to her music career, Swift has appeared in the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in 2009, the late-night show Saturday Night Live in 2009 and the film Valentine's Day(2010).
