Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter. Her narrative songwriting, which often centers around her personal life, has received widespread media coverage. Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, Swift relocated to Nashville, Tennessee in 2004 to pursue a career in country music. At age 14, she became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house, and at age 15, she signed her first record deal. Her 2006 eponymous debut studio album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s on the Billboard 200. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Country Airplay chart. Swift's breakthrough second studio album, Fearless (2008), won four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, and was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America. It yielded thecrossover hit singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me".Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Swift spent her early years on her family's Christmas tree farm in nearby Wyomissing. Her grandmother had been a professional opera singer, and Swift soon followed in her musical footsteps. Before Taylor was a singer, she was a poet. She won a national poetry contest when she was only 9 years old, and by the age of 12 she was putting her poems to music. "If you can put words together the right way, and if you put the right rhymes at the end of the right sentences, you can make words bounce of a page. That's always been my favorite thing," she says. "I've made sure that in any situation and with any record label, I'm allowed to write my own music." By the age of 10, Swift was singing at a variety of local events, including fairs and contests. She sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a Philadelphia 76ers basketball game at the age of 11, and began writing her own songs and learning guitar at 12 years old. To pursueher 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, Swift and her family moved to nearby Hendersonville, Tennessee, in an attempt to further Swift's career. At the age of 12, she was taught 3 chords by a computer repairman on a guitar. With these 3 simple chords she wrote her first song, ‘Lucky You’. She joined the Henderson High School in Tennessee at the age of to 14 where she would study only for 2 years.She now got a contract deal with RCA records where she would collaborate with other experienced songwriters. By the age of 15, she was not only good at singing and the guitar but had become a great songwriter. She was now hired as the youngest songwriter at 15 by Sony/ATV Tree publishing house to write songs for other singers. But in 2005, she joined Big Machine Records in order to create her own album. Within one year she was ready with herfirst album at the age of 16 in which she wrote 3 songs on her own and co-wrote the 8 remaining songs.