Taylor Swift – a musical journey

A name, not so unfamiliar, that has created sensations in every musical heart is Taylor Alison Swift. The journey of the beautiful, pretty, gorgeous singing sensation of the decade was not so musical after all.

Sagittarius by birth, Taylor Swift was born on 13 December, 1989 and displayed every quality of her sun sign by being confident, resourceful and bringing tenacity to everything she does with a precise and occasionally painstaking attention to the smallest detail. People are afraid of making mistakes and looking silly, but she has been among the lucky people who seize the moment whether they are ready for it or not.

Between the age of nine and eleven, she devoted her weekends performing at local festivals, fairs, coffeehouses, karaoke contests, garden clubs, Boy Scout meetings and sporting events. After winning the local talent competition by singing a rendition of LeAnn Rimes’s “Big Deal” she was given the opportunity to appear in the opening act for Charlie Daniels at a Strauss town amphitheater. This growing ambition made her middle school peers isolate her.

At the age of fourteen, she turned herself completely into the musical industry. She started writing sessions with experienced Music Row song writers and later, worked jointly with Liz Rose. In spite of being the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house, at the age of fifteen, she left these works and felt that she was ready to release her own album. Although people around, including her manager, asked her to write songs till the age of eighteen but she felt that time was running out and she had much to tell the world what was going in and around her.

In 2005, she started her musical journey by interning as an artist escort at the CMA Music Festival. Her debut album titled “Taylor Swift” was launched in October, 2006. She worked really hard to promote her first album. She did a radio tour for about six months, used Myspace to build a fan following along with all this she used to bake cookies to gift the crew of the radio stations who used to play her songs.  Later in 2006 and 2007 her single songs were released, one of which made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and sing a number one country song.

In November, 2008 her second album “Fearless” was released. She promoted this album at a very large scale by participating in various chat shows. The leading song “Love Story” was remarkably recognized in the musical industry. Her later release in 2008 and 2009 were “White Horse”, “You belong with me”, “Fifteen” and “Fearless”. All the songs were marked with huge fan following and brought Taylor Swift the much awaited success. In 2010 she organized a “Journey to Fearless” music concert series. Due to its huge success, it was aired as a 3 day show that included several hits of Taylor Swift.

Swift became the first music artist to win an MTV Video Music Award when “You Belong with Me” was named Best Female Video in 2009. Swift won four Grammy Awards in 2010 out of eight nominations. Fearless was named Album of the Year and Best Country Album, while “White Horse” was named Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance. She was the youngest ever artist to win Album of the Year. She was also named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association. Fearless also won the Association’s Album of the Year award. Swift was the youngest ever artist to win the Academy of Country Music’s Album of the Year honor. She also won several awards like The American Music Awards, Hal David Starlight Award by the Songwriters Hall of Fame, was named Songwriter/Artist of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association, Billboard named her 2009’s Artist of the Year and was included in Time’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in 2010.

Her third album “Speak Now” was released in October, 2010. Again, she got herself involved in the promotional events of the album. At the 54th Grammy Awards, Swift’s song “Mean” won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. Swift’s fourth studio album, Red, was released in October 2012. As part of the Red promotional campaign, representatives from 72 worldwide radio stations were flown to Nashville during release week for individual interviews with Swift.

She has already begun writing songs for her fifth album and soon it will be out for the Swift fans. So, staying influenced by her journey let’s await the fifth album which is planned to be released in 2014.

 

(Pic Courtesy: Wikipidea)

Aastikta Sharma

The Closer you Look, The Less you See !!

Leave a Reply