Taylor Alison Swift was born December 13th, 1989 in Reading, Pennsylvania. She was raised mostly in Wyomissing until she reached the age of 14 when she moved to Nashville, Tennessee to attempt a career in country music. Around the age of 12 a computer repairman showed her how to play several chords on a guitar. She then wrote her first song “Lucky You.” Even after she won a national poetry contest writing a poem titled “Monster in My Closet” she chose to focus on songwriting. Only a few of the lines of the poem have been released and the full poem is close to three pages. Of the lines she has shared are "There’s a monster in my closet and I don’t know what to do / Have you ever seen him? / Has he ever pounced on you?”
She began working with music manager Dan Dymtro and with his help she started modeling for Abercrombie and Fitch in their “Rising Stars” campaign. She also began performing for major record labels and RCA awarded her an artist development deal and the eighth-grader began frequently traveling to Nashville. Taylor’s rise to fame was fairly quick, she went from stuffing radio singles into envelopes as part of her first album to her second album, “Fearless” becoming the most awarded album in country music history with one of its singles “Love Story” becoming the second best country single of all time. One of her songs, “Picture to Burn” has made the list of the top ten most censored songs of the country genre. In the original song it stated she would spread rumors about her ex being gay to an, apparently, more politically correct statement, “You won’t mind if I say.”
In 2008, she was ranked 50th on Maxim’s top 100 hottest women. Since then she has jumped to a staggering #13. Coincidentally her favorite number is also 13. Although some people may consider 13 unlucky, she credits it to many events in her life. For example, she was born on the thirteenth, turned 13 on friday the 13th and her first album went gold in 13 weeks. As she has made clear in her career, she has a tendency to “kiss and tell” using her relationships to get ideas for her new songs.
