Taylor Swift, the American country and pop songwriter-singer, musician and actress, was born on December 13, 1989 in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. In 2006, Swift released Tim McGraw her debut single along with her debut self-titled album. The set was subsequently certified by the RIAA as multi-platinum. Swift also received a Grammy Awards nomination as Best New Artist. She released Fearless, her second album, in November 2008. Swift earned four Grammy Awards, which included Album of the Year.

In 2008, Fearless finished at number three with 2. 1 million in sales and Taylor Swift at number six with 1.5 million sales. For 11 weeks in a row Fearless was No. 1 on Billboard’s 200 chart. Since 2000, no other album has been at No. 1 for that long. In 2009 Billboard named Swift Artist of the Year. In October 2019, Swift released Speak Now, her third album. During its first week out, the album sold a total of 1,047,00 copies.

In 2008, Swift’s album sold four million copies combined to make her that year’s best selling musician in the U.S. She was ranked by Forbes as the 69th most powerful of celebrities in 2009 with $18 million in earnings and in 2010 as 12th most powerful with $45 million in earnings. Billboard ranked Swift as 38th Best Artist for the decade of 2000-2010. Nielsen SoundScan in January 2010 named Swift as country music’s (or pop/country crossover) artist ever, with sales in digital tracks of more than 28 million. Swift has sold more than 16 million worldwide albums through December 2010.