Career and Rise to Fame
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After moving to Hendersonville, Tennessee, Swift was signed with the label “Big Machine Records” after an outstanding performance at The Bluebird Café in Nashville. Her first single, "Tim McGraw", was released in 2006 and instantly hit at the top 10 on the country charts. Later that year it also appeared on her self-titled debut album, selling over 2.5 milion copies. Even more popular singles were later released such as "Our Song", a number 1 country hit and "Teardrops on My Guitar," "Picture to Burn" and "Should've Said No" were also all popular and sold well.
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Naturally, Swift received a lot of praise after her success and debut effort. She won the Horizon Award from the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music Award for the Top New Female Vocalist, both in 2007. Swift later released "Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection" in the same year. It included her version of "Silent Night" and "Santa Baby", both of which were average on the charts.
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Swift was then nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist, won the award of "Female Vocalist of the Year" from the Academy of Country Music, the American Music Awards "Favorite Female Country Artist" award, and the "Horizon" award from the American Music Association. Swift then released her next album, "Fearless", which stayed at the top of both the country and pop charts for 11 weeks. Swift became the highest-selling country artist of 2008 at the end of the year.
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In 2009, Swift was granted many awards for her recently released album, "Fearless", such as "Video of the Year" and "Female Video of the Year". Swift also won the MTV Video Music Award for "Best Female Video" and became the first country artist to win and MTV Video Music Award. After the attention the award show got when Kanye West interrupted Swift's speech and announced that Beyoncé should have won, Swift became ever more popular. Tickets to her concerts were selling out in less than 2 minutes, and she also became the youngest artist to win the "Album of the Year" Grammy Award in 2010 for "Fearless".
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Swift released the album "Speak Now" in 2010, followed by the album "Red" in 2012, and later, the album "1989" in 2014. All three of of them sold over 1 million copies in its first week of release, making Swift the first woman to have three albums sell more than 1 million copies in their opening week.
Bibliography
Taylor Swift. (2015). The Biography.com website. Retrieved 11:05, May 18, 2015, fromhttp://www.biography.com/people/taylor-swift-369608.
Information last updated: 5/18/2015
Information last updated: 5/18/2015