A 2008 country-pop album that made her, at twenty, the youngest winner of the Album of the Year Grammy at the time (2008)
Fearless, which won the award in 2010.
Popular music · Pop
Taylor Swift
born 1989 · American
Country to pop — Big Machine, then Republic
Taylor Swift began as a teenage country songwriter in Nashville and became the biggest pop star of her generation, the only artist to have won the Album of the Year Grammy four times, and the first to gross more than two billion dollars on a single tour. A dispute over the ownership of her first six albums led her to re-record them, an act of commercial defiance that reshaped debates about artists' rights, and which ended in 2025 when she bought the original masters back.
How to spot them
- ▸Autobiographical, detail-heavy lyrics; distinct album 'eras' with their own colour schemes and rules
- ▸Nashville beginnings with Big Machine; the pop turn with Max Martin and Shellback; the folk turn with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff
- ▸Easter eggs, hidden messages and a fanbase — the Swifties — trained to decode them
- ▸The re-recorded albums marked 'Taylor's Version'
Songs & albums
A 2014 album named after the year of her birth, and her first billed as pop rather than country (2014)
1989, made with Max Martin and Shellback.
A 2020 album of woodland indie-pop written in lockdown with a member of The National (2020)
folklore, made with Aaron Dessner.
A 2021 project of re-recorded albums, launched to devalue master tapes she did not own (2021)
The "Taylor's Version" re-recordings, beginning with Fearless.
A 2022 album structured as thirteen sleepless nights from across her life (2022)
Midnights — which won her a record-breaking fourth Album of the Year Grammy.
A 2023–24 stadium tour of three-hour career-spanning sets, the highest-grossing of all time (2023)
The Eras Tour, which closed in Vancouver in December 2024.
A 2024 double album about a brief, disastrous relationship, framed as a writer's confessions (2024)
The Tortured Poets Department.
A 2025 album made in Sweden with Max Martin and Shellback, themed on the world backstage (2025)
The Life of a Showgirl.
Quick-fire facts
- •Born 13 December 1989 in West Reading, Pennsylvania; her family moved to Nashville when she was fourteen
- •She was signed by Scott Borchetta to his new label Big Machine Records
- •She is the only artist to have won the Album of the Year Grammy four times: for Fearless, 1989, folklore and Midnights
- •Her masters were sold with Big Machine to Scooter Braun in 2019 and on to Shamrock Capital in 2020; she bought them back in May 2025
- •She began re-recording her first six albums in 2020, releasing them as 'Taylor's Version'
- •The Eras Tour was the first concert tour to gross more than $2 billion, and ended in Vancouver on 8 December 2024
- •She was Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2023
- •She was interrupted by Kanye West while accepting an MTV Video Music Award in 2009
- •She married the American football player Travis Kelce in 2026
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- The Recording Academy — Taylor Swift — artist page and awards record
- Billboard — Taylor Swift Buys Back Her Masters From Shamrock, Reclaiming Her First Six Albums