1989-present
Taylor Swift News: Singer Sets Another Record as Billboard Music Awards’ All-Time Winner
Hours ahead of her 35th birthday, Taylor Swift had cause for celebration. Beyond winning 10 trophies at the 2024 Billboard Music Awards on December 12, the pop star became the most decorated artist in the award show’s history. Her 49 career wins pushed her ahead of Drake, whom she tied in 2023.
Among her haul this year were titles for Top Artist, Top Female Artist, and Top Billboard Global Artist (excluding the United States). Swift is the first person to claim Top Artist four times, according to Billboard. She previously won in 2013, 2015, and 2023.
Winners are determined by their performance on various Billboard charts. This year, Swift racked up 32 new songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including her 12th chart-topper in “Fortnight,” following the April release of The Tortured Poets Department. Her newest album spent 16 weeks leading the Billboard 200, a personal best.
Three days before the awards show, Swift wrapped her massively successful Eras Tour. It’s the highest-grossing tour in history, with The New York Times reporting it sold more than $2 billion in tickets.
Even more hardware could be in store for Swift come the 2025 Grammy Awards in February. Her six nominations include Album of the Year for Tortured Poets as well as Song of the Year and Record of the Year for “Fortnight.” Another trophy in the best album category would extend her record to five. The 14-time Grammy winner has never won the top song and recording prizes.
Who Is Taylor Swift?
Musician Taylor Swift began earning renown as a country singer at age 16 and has since become one of the biggest stars in pop music history. Early hits like “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me” appealed to country and pop fans alike and helped fuel the multiplatinum success of her albums, including the award-winning Fearless. Now a pop megastar with 14 Grammys, she is the first artist to win Album of the Year four times. The “Shake It Off” and “Anti-Hero” singer released her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April 2024 and concluded her record-breaking Eras Tour in December. Swift is currently dating professional football player Travis Kelce.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Taylor Alison Swift
BORN: December 13, 1989
BIRTHPLACE: Reading, Pennsylvania
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius
Where Is Taylor Swift From?
Taylor Alison Swift was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1989. Swift spent her early years with her parents, Scott and Andrea, and brother, Austin, on the family’s Christmas tree farm in nearby Wyomissing. “I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head,” she told Rolling Stone. She learned to ride horses and competed, but a greater passion soon took root.
Swift followed in the musical footsteps of her grandmother Marjorie Finlay, a professional opera singer. By age 10, Swift sang at various local events, including fairs and contests. She sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game at age 11 and began learning guitar and writing her own songs at 12. (Her songwriting parallels the poetry of her distant cousin Emily Dickinson.) Her early music idols included Shania Twain and The Chicks.
To pursue her music career, Swift often visited Nashville, Tennessee, the country music capital. There, she co-wrote songs and tried to land a recording contract. Noting her dedication, her family moved to nearby Hendersonville when she was 13 in an attempt to further young Swift’s career. She attended Hendersonville High School before finishing her education through the homeschooling program of Aaron Academy, a private Christian school, once her musical career took off.
Music Career
One of today’s biggest pop stars, Swift has worked her way from performing at local venues in Tennessee to commanding stadiums full of Swifties—her adoring fans—on international tours. A stellar performance at The Bluebird Café in Nashville helped her get a contract with Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Records at age 14.
Taylor Swift performed at the Academy of Country Music Awards in May 2007.
She spent her early career as a country musician, and her first single, “Tim McGraw,” was named after one of the genre’s biggest stars. The 2006 song, which she wrote in her first-year math class, became a Top 10 hit on Billboard’s country charts, quickly launching Swift into the spotlight. McGraw and fellow country music singer Faith Hill even brought Swift on their Soul2Soul tour the next year as an opening act. Reminiscing on the tour years later, McGraw told ET Canada, “Faith and I both knew that there was no stopping her. She’s a special talent.”
It wasn’t long before Swift began receiving critical praise for her work. The teenager won the Horizon Award from the Country Music Association (CMA) and the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Award for Top New Female Vocalist in 2007. The following year, she was nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys. She became the youngest artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year for Fearless in 2010.
The country music darling eventually began experimenting with genre. With her fifth album, 1989, she decisively reintroduced herself as a pop musician. Her new sound excited fans, and the 2014 release is one of her most successful to date, spending 11 weeks atop the Billboard 200 and selling more than 1.2 million copies in its first week.
Not everything about her music changed, though. Personal experiences, including her romantic relationships, continue to fuel Swift’s songwriting. “I’m enthralled by relationships, and I love the drama in them, but that’s usually where it lives,” Swift told Rolling Stone in 2009, maintaining “I’m not a dramatic person.” Hardly the first musician to utilize this practice, the pop star usually doesn’t reveal who her song subjects. Instead, her loyal fans obsess over easter eggs in her lyrics and music videos to pinpoint a likely person.
Taylor Swift began her international Eras Tour in March 2023.
In March 2023, Swift began her headline-grabbing Eras Tour. It marked her sixth international tour, having first headlined her own concert series after releasing her sophomore album, Fearless. When presale tickets for the Eras Tour went live in November 2022, so many fans attempted to snag seats that Ticketmaster canceled the general sale, leading to a congressional hearing about the debacle. The intense demand made the Eras Tour the first to sell more than $1 billion in tickets, shattering Elton John’s previous record for highest-grossing tour in history at $939.1 million.
Swift’s successes in 2023 also include: the release of the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) album, the record-setting concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, two more No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, tying with Drake as the artist with the most Billboard Music Awards in history, dethroning Bad Bunny as Spotify’s and Apple Music’s most streamed artist of the year, and achieving billionaire status. All that culminated in Time naming her its 2023 Person of the Year. Swift is the fifth woman to receive the honor.
Early in 2024, Swift became the first artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year four times, further cementing her place in the history books. She continued on the Eras Tour, mostly performing abroad, but was forced to cancel three appearances in Vienna after plans for terrorist attacks emerged. Her final stop was in Vancouver, Canada, in early December. After two years and 149 concerts, the Eras Tour totaled more than $2.077 billion in ticket sales. Elsewhere, she defended her titles as the most streamed artist of 2024 on Spotify and Apple Music then became the most awarded artist in Billboard Music Award history with 49 trophies.
How Many Grammys Does Taylor Swift Have?
Taylor Swift, seen here at the 2016 Grammy Awards, has taken home 12 trophies in her career.
Swift has won 14 Grammy Awards out of 58 nominations. This includes six nominations for the 2025 ceremony. The Tortured Poets Department is competing for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album. “Fortnight” could win Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and/or Best Music Video. Swift’s final nod is in the Best Pop Duo/Group Performance category for her featured part on Gracie Abrams’ song “us.”
The singer was first nominated in 2008 for Best New Artist. Although Amy Winehouse claimed the honor, 20-year-old Swift lived up to her promising career start by collecting four Grammys the following year. Fearless won Album of the Year and Best Country Album, and “White Horse” was named Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 2009.
Swift has now won Album of the Year four times: for Fearless, 1989, folklore, and Midnights. She is the only artist to have accomplished this feat, setting the record in 2024, and the only female musician to have been nominated in the category seven times.
The artist has never won the top song honor of Song of the Year, though she has received a record eight nominations in the category. As for Best Country Song, Swift has won twice in five nominations; “Mean” earned the trophy the year after “White Horse” did.
The singer-songwriter has won many other accolades, including nine CMA Awards and eight ACM Awards. Both country music organizations have twice named her Entertainer of the Year. Since her first in 2009, Swift has taken home 30 MTV Video Music Awards, matching Beyoncé’s record for most wins. Billboard called her Woman of the Year in 2011 and 2014, two of Swift’s 49 awards from the publication. In 2024, she surpassed Drake as the artist with the most Billboard Music Awards trophies.
In December 2023, Swift notched another first when she received her first Golden Globe Award nomination for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Her concert film competed in but didn’t win Cinematic and Box Office Achievement at the January 2024 ceremony.
Hit Songs
Since her first single, “Tim McGraw,” in 2006, Swift’s music has found a home on the Billboard charts. As of December 13, 2024, she has had 264 songs grace the mainstream Hot 100. That includes 12 No. 1 hits and a record-setting 59 songs in the top 10; no woman has had more top 10 hits, and Swift only trails Drake among all artists. She also holds nine No. 1 Hot Country Songs, including “Our Song” and “Should’ve Said No.”
“Fearless” debuted at No. 9 on the mainstream chart in November 2008, marking Swift’s first top 10 song. Her first Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper was roughly four years away. That arrived in September 2012 with Grammy-nominated “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Her other No 1. songs include:
- “Shake It Off”
- “Blank Space”
- “Bad Blood”
- “Look What You Made Me Do”
- “Cardigan”
- “Willow”
- “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)”
- “Anti-Hero”
- “Cruel Summer”
- “Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]”
- “Fortnight”
At 10 minutes and 13 seconds, “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” is the longest No. 1 hit in history. Both “Fearless” and “Shake It Off” are diamond-certified songs, having sold the equivalent of 10 million copies.
Albums
To date, Swift has released 19 albums, including 11 original studio albums, four rereleases, and four live albums. Excluding those live recordings, every album since her sophomore effort, Fearless, has nabbed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 for at least one week. In December 2023, she became the first living artist to have five albums simultaneously rank among the chart’s top 10.
Her first album came in 2006 with Taylor Swift, and her newest album is 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department. Her latest rerecorded album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), debuted in October 2023. Her albums, in order, are:
What Is Taylor Swift’s Net Worth?
When she was 26, Swift was the highest-paid musician—and celebrity of any industry—of 2016 per Forbes, earning $170 million. It was one successful year among many, allowing the pop star to amass a remarkably large net worth. By late October 2023, Swift had become a billionaire, according to Bloomberg.
As of December 13, 2024, Forbes estimates Swift has a net worth of $1.6 billion, surpassing Rihanna as the wealthiest female musician. The magazine also reports Swift is the first person to become a billionaire primarily from songwriting and performing. In 2023, she earned an estimated $131 million on Spotify alone, as the platform’s worldwide top-streamed artist of the year.
Her wealth has skyrocketed in the past two years, fueled by the pop star’s highly successful Eras Tour. Swift became the first musician to gross over $1 billion on a single tour in December 2023. Ultimately, her production company confirmed to The New York Times that ticket sales totaled $2,077,618,725. In April 2024, before the Eras Tour finished, Forbes noted her estimated take-home from the concert series is $190 million.
Swift ranks No. 17 on Pollstar’s list of highest-grossing touring artists since 1980, selling nearly $925 million in tickets from her first five tours and other appearances as of July 2022. The only women higher on the list are Madonna, Celine Dion, and Beyoncé.
Contributing to her overall net worth are her real estate holdings. According to Business Insider, her properties total $84 million. She also has lucrative endorsement deals with Capitol One, Stella McCartney, Diet Coke, Apple, and more.
Over the years, the musician has shared some of her fortune to help others. For example, in 2013, she funded the $4 million Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. The facility opened with three classrooms, a learning lab, and a space dedicated to exhibits for children. In an interview with CMT Hot 20 Countdown, she explained that “music education is really such an important part of my life. My life changed so completely when I discovered writing my own songs and playing guitar, and that can’t necessarily all be taught to you in school because there aren’t enough hours in the day.”
Who Has Taylor Swift Dated?
Dating rumors between Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift first sparked in September 2023 when the musician attended a Kansas City Chiefs game.
Currently, Swift is dating NFL football player Travis Kelce. On a July 2023 episode of his New Heights podcast, Kelce explained how he tried to give Swift his number on a friendship bracelet after attending the Eras Tour in Kansas City. Soon after, Swift reached out, and they went public with their romance in the fall. “Obviously, I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them… I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce told The Wall Street Journal. “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it.”
Swift attended 12 of his NFL games in the 2023 season and postseason. “By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple,” she told Time. “I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”
Kelce returned the support in mid-November 2023, traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to attend one of her concerts on the Eras Tour. During the show, Swift changed one of her lyrics in the song “Karma” to reference Kelce, and the couple were caught kissing on camera for the first time. At a June 2024 concert in London, Kelce briefly joined Swift on stage, helping her complete an outfit change between songs.
With the start of the 2024-25 NFL season, Swift has once again been a fixture at the Kansas City Chiefs home games.
Over the years, Swift has dated several celebrities. During much of 2008, reports circulated that she was dating musician Joe Jonas of The Jonas Brothers. The song “Forever & Always” is reportedly about Jonas. The following year, Swift briefly dated actor Taylor Lautner, whom she met while they filmed the 2010 movie Valentine’s Day. Swift then dated fellow singer-songwriter John Mayer for a brief period beginning in late 2009; he’s thought to be the inspiration for her song “Dear John.”
From there, Swift was romantically linked to actors Cory Monteith and Jake Gyllenhaal in 2010, then Conor Kennedy—son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—in 2012. She celebrated the new year with One Direction’s Harry Styles in 2013, but the relationship ended later that year. In 2015, Swift dated DJ and music producer Calvin Harris, though the couple reportedly broke up in June 2016. Shortly after that, the pop star began dating actor Tom Hiddleston, but the couple split three months later.
Swift’s longest relationship to date was with actor Joe Alwyn. The pair met at the 2016 Met Gala and were together from 2017 until spring 2023. Beyond being another boyfriend to spark her songwriting, Alwyn also helped write songs on her folklore, evermore, and Midnights albums under the pseudonym William Bowery. After their breakup, Swift briefly dated musician Matty Healy, lead singer of The 1975 band.
Scooter Braun Masters Controversy and Rerecording Project
In November 2018, Swift signed with Universal Music Group’s Republic Records. The deal granted the musician ownership of her master recordings, something she didn’t have in her agreement with her first label, Big Machine Records.
The next June, Swift revealed her dismay that Big Machine sold her catalog of music from her first six albums, up to reputation, to a company owned by Scooter Braun, the now-retired manager of artists like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande and a person she accused of bullying tactics. “Scooter has stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy,” she wrote on Tumblr. “Essentially, my musical legacy is about to lie in the hands of someone who tried to dismantle it.” Just before the August 2019 release of Lover, Swift confirmed she would rerecord her old music to regain artistic and financial control of her catalog.
Swift’s catalog was sold again, in October 2020, to Shamrock Holdings for around $300 million. In a lengthy post on Twitter (now called X), Swift gave her fans an update:
“As you know, for the past year, I’ve been actively trying to regain ownership of my master recordings. With that goal in mind, my team attempted to enter into negotiations with Scooter Braun.
“Scooter’s team wanted me to sign an ironclad NDA stating I would never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive, before we could even look at the financial records of BMLG… I would have to sign a document that would silence me forever before I could even have a chance to bid on my own work. My legal team said that this is absolutely NOT normal, and they’ve never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off. He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me.”
Swift added the deal still allows Braun to profit from her music and that she was in the process of re-recording her old music. Her first rerecorded release, “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” came in mid-February 2021. So far, she has reissued four of six albums from her early catalog.
Watch Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun: Bad Blood, a documentary about their feud, on Max
Sexual Assault Trial and Copyright Lawsuits
The megastar has been involved in a few legal disputes, which all have gone in her favor. In August 2017, she testified in a trial against David Mueller, a former radio DJ she accused of groping her four years earlier. Mueller denied Swift’s allegations and said the incident cost him his job, which led him to sue Swift, her mother, and a radio station employee in 2015. Swift countersued him for alleged assault and battery, and a jury ruled in her favor in 2017, awarding her $1 in damages as a symbolic gesture.
Swift responded to the verdict: “I acknowledge the privilege that I benefit from in life, in society, and in my ability to shoulder the enormous cost of defending myself in a trial like this. My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves.”
Also in 2017, Swift was on the receiving end of a lawsuit when two songwriters claimed that she stole the chorus of their song “Playas Gon’ Play” for her hit “Shake It Off.” Although a judge dismissed the case in early 2018 on the grounds that the “allegedly infringed lyrics are short phrases that lack the modicum of originality and creativity required for copyright protection,” an appeals court revived the suit in October 2019. Shortly before the trial was scheduled to begin, a judge dismissed the case in December 2022 at the request of both parties. A few media outlets reported a settlement, but if so, the terms weren’t publicly released.
The musician was trapped in another copyright lawsuit when a Mississippi woman claimed “a number of creative elements” from her self-published poetry book appeared in Swift’s companion book for her Lover (2019) album. The author sued in August 2022 but voluntarily dropped her case the next July.
Feud with Kanye West
Beyond her romantic relationships, Swift has had many high-profile friendships—with singer and actor Selena Gomez, model Karlie Kloss, and actor Blake Lively, to name a few—as well as headline-making feuds. Chief among those is her beef with rapper Kanye West.
Kayne West interrupts Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards in September.
In 2009, when Swift won the MTV Video Music Award’s Best Female Video for “You Belong With Me,” West led to the stage as the young singer gave her acceptance speech. He took the mic and famously declared, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!”
The stunned Swift could not finish her acceptance speech, and West was removed from the show. When Beyoncé accepted her award for Best Video of the Year later in the night, she called Swift to the stage to finish her speech. West later apologized to Swift privately and publicly on The Jay Leno Show.
In early 2016, West released his song “Famous,” which includes a lyric taking credit for her fame and calling her a derogatory word. The rapper said Swift had approved the line in a phone call, though her team initially denied the conversation. Days later, Swift said in a Grammys acceptance speech:
“I wanna say to all the young women out there, there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame. But if you just focus on the work, and you don’t let those people sidetrack you, someday when you get where you’re going, you’ll look around and you will know that it was you and the people who loved you who put you there. And that will be the greatest feeling in the world.”
Kim Kardashian, who was married to West then, defended her husband in a GQ interview that summer and released clips of the phone call between the musicians. Although edited, the recordings proved Swift’s PR team had been lying in their initial statement. Kardashian also implied Swift was a snake in a July 2016 social media post. The pop star alluded to the fight in the songs “Look What You Made Me Do” and “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” from her reputation (2017) album. She has also used snakes in music videos and onstage in concerts. The feud briefly reignited in March 2020 when a 25-minute video of the phone conversation leaked online.
Documentary and Movies
Previously having released several concert movies, Swift made a bigger splash with her Netflix documentary Miss Americana. The January 2020 release covered the makings of her recent studio albums as well as other high-profile events like her sexual assault trial. Miss Americana earned a limited run in theaters simultaneously to its streaming release.
Swift’s newest concert movie, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, capitalizes on her massive star power. The film opened exclusively in theaters—3,850 locations in North America alone—in October 2023. According to Comscore, no other concert movie enjoyed as wide of a release. It also had showtimes in some 90 other countries and grossed more than $261 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time. Swift sweetened the show for at-home viewers with two extended versions. Disney+ subscribers can watch the Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version), featuring five additional songs. The movie is also available for rent on other streaming platforms with three additional songs.
Swift has also dabbled in acting. She appeared in the 2010 blockbuster Valentine’s Day alongside Julia Roberts, Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, and other Hollywood heavyweights. A voice role in The Lorax (2012) and another role in The Giver (2014) followed. In December 2019, Swift was featured in a live-action adaptation of the famed Broadway musical Cats, along with Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, and Rebel Wilson. She also teamed with Cats creator Andrew Lloyd Webber to write a song, “Beautiful Ghosts,” for the movie. Swift also had a cameo in 2022’s Amsterdam.
Quotes
- I have this really high priority on happiness and finding something to be happy about.
- Just be yourself. There is no one better.
- I’m not fast at running. I’m not fast at any kind of force. I’m fast at trivia games.
- The words you regret most are often the ones unsaid.
- I have to believe in fairytales, and I have to believe in love.
- Never believe anyone who says you don’t deserve what you want.
- Life isn’t about how to survive the storm. It’s about how to dance in the rain.
- You’re lucky enough to be different. Never change.
- I’ve learned when to get out. I’ve never wasted too much time with the wrong person, and that’s one thing I’m proud of.
- People haven’t always been there for me, but music has.
- To me, feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it’s just basically another word for equality.
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