Taylor Swift

Country teen queen Taylor Swift charmed fans and critics alike when she came out of the gate at sixteen with a self-titled debut for which she wrote or co-wrote every song with the introspective maturity of a singer/songwriter twice her age. The album's mix of rock and pop with a Dixie Chicks-like twang struck a chord, shooting to Number One on Billboard's Country Chart and Number Five on the Pop Chart.

Taylor Alison Swift was born December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Her grandmother, an opera singer, was an early influence but Swift soon discovered the music Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and LeAnn Rimes. When she was eleven, she took her homemade demo tapes to Nashville and continued traveling back and forth to Music City for the next three years. When she was fourteen, her family permanently moved to the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, Tennessee. During a performance at the famed Bluebird Café, she was spotted by Scott Borchetta, who signed her to his new label, Big Machine Records. Her debut, Taylor Swift, arrived in 2006 along with a single, "Tim McGraw" (Number Six country, Number 40 pop, 2007), whose video reached Number One on CMT's video chart and spent a record-breaking thirty consecutive weeks on the Great American Country network's weekly Top Twenty countdown.

Subsequent singles included "Our Song" (Number One country, 2007) and "Teardrops on My Guitar," (Number Two country, 2007; Number 13 pop, 2008). At the 2007 Nashville Songwriters Association, Swift became the youngest artist ever to win Songwriter/Artist of the Year. That year, her video for "Tim McGraw" won CMT's Breakthrough Video of the Year. Swift's second album of new material is expected in fall of 2008.