Background Info
Taylor Swift was born in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania and lives with her parents,
Scott and Andrea, and her brother, Austin, now in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Swift's influences include her grandmother and LeAnn Rimes. Although her grandmother
was a professional opera singer, Taylor's tastes always ran more toward country and
she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton at an early age. She also credits
the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain for demonstrating how much impact can be made by
"stretching boundaries". At the age of ten, Swift began to perform around her home town,
Wyomissing, singing at karaoke contests, festivals, and fairs, and also started writing
songs. Her first exposure to the music business consisted of recording demo tapes at a
studio. At age eleven, Swift made her first trip to Nashville in hopes of
obtaining a record deal by handing out a demo tape she had made of her singing along to
karaoke songs. She boldly handed this tape to receptionists at every label on Music Row.
Swift faced much rejection, not just from record labels, but also from her peers. When
asked how she was able to handle such hurtful rejection from record labels, she responded
saying that it wasn't nearly as painful as the rejection she received from the kids
around her. One of the first songs she wrote, The Outside, was her expression of feeling
that rejection. After Swift returned to Pennsylvania,she was asked to sing at the U.S.
Open tennis tournament; her rendition of the national anthem completely moved the
crowd. Swift signed to a record label at the age of thirteen, but walked away because it
"wasn't where she wanted to be." Swift began to regularly visit Nashville, where, at age
twelve,she wrote songs with local songwriters. Eventually, her family decided to move
to an outlying Nashville suburb. Taylor Swift performed at Nashville's premier songwriters'
café, The Bluebird Café, catching the attention of Scott Borchetta who signed her
to his newly-formed record label, Big Machine Records. Swift plays a Taylor Grand
Auditorium acoustic guitar made of koa wood.