Taylor Swift - Her Life, Music & All Eras

News of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was met with so much excitement, emotion and ticket demand in November 2022 that the concerts could become one of the biggest runs of live shows in the history of pop music. It would be a remarkable accomplishment, but not all that shocking considering the multitude of record-breaking achievements Swift has managed to amass since she first arrived on the music scene in 2006. On her way to becoming the definitive musical icon of her generation—over the course of 10 albums in 16 years—Swift has created an impressive catalog of work that would be Hall of Fame–worthy even if she called it a career tomorrow. Swift has rarely stayed in one lane as an artist—bounding between genres and masterfully combining styles all centered around…

Though she didn’t know it yet, Taylor Swift’s birthday would become a huge part of her iconography as an artist. She was born Dec. 13, 1989, and both the day she arrived (she declared 13 her lucky number and her Twitter handle is @TaylorSwift13) and the year of her birth (she would later title her fifth album 1989) have played into the greater tapestry of her musical life. Swift grew up comfortable (both her parents came from the world of finance) on a Christmas tree farm in southeastern Pennsylvania, and fell in love with performing at an early age. She started acting in local musicals, taking voice lessons, competing in karaoke competitions and receiving wisdom from her grandmother, a former opera singer (who was the subject of the song “Marjorie,”…

Taylor Swift’s first proper year as a star followed a traditional arc: Her selftitled debut sold steadily as she released more singles and spent time on the road as the opening act for such industry stalwarts as George Strait and Brad Paisley. Mainstream media outlets and pop radio kept noticing her—and while there had been plenty of other young female artists in country music’s vast history—most notably LeAnn Rimes, who scored a massive hit with “How Do I Live” when she was just 14—these performers had never really catered to the demographic of which they were a part: teenagers who were engaged with the Nashville sound. That audience had never experienced a country star speaking directly to them. Swift was, and that pushed her into a much bigger spotlight. All…

By 2010, the idea of Taylor Swift setting sales records or collecting awards was no longer unthinkable—and she was still barely old enough to buy a celebratory glass of champagne. Her albums and live appearances were huge events, and she had already begun dipping her toe into acting, taking a role in Garry Marshall’s holiday anthology film, Valentine’s Day, and making her debut as a host on Saturday Night Live. Her celebrity had also increased exponentially, particularly following a number of high-profile romances (including with Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner and John Mayer) and the incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards when Kanye West trampled on her acceptance speech for Best Female Video. Swift was not just a breakout music star anymore, she was click-producing tabloid fodder—and a target…

When Taylor Swift released “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” as the first single from Red in August of 2012, there was a lot of speculation about to which ex-boyfriend she was delivering that message. (The assumption has always been that it was about actor Jake Gyllenhaal; he and Swift dated for a few months at the end of 2010.) But it might just as well have been a kiss-off to the Nashville establishment. Red is the sound of Swift leaving her country roots in the dust and fully embracing the wide world of synthesized pop. “I was standing on a state line,” Swift said of her existence in both the pop and country worlds. “I had a foot on either side of the borderline.” To pull off this…

On “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Taylor Swift’s chart-topping single from her 2012 album, Red, she makes a reference to the fact that the ex-boyfriend she’s singing to has chosen to listen to “some indie record that’s much cooler than mine.” But the truth was that Red scored Swift heaps of critical accolades. For her follow-up record two years later, though, no one could claim to have an album cooler than hers. Released in October 2014, 1989 has several of the pop-forward hallmarks of its predecessor: Max Martin and Shellback returned for a handful of tracks (including lead single “Shake It Off”) and the underlying sound of the album is even more consistently rooted in synth-pop and electronic sounds than Red. Pop maximalist Ryan Tedder (of OneRepublic and…