PEOPLE Taylor Swift

As Taylor Swift herself would put it: She’s got a lot going on at the moment. She started her big year with a 12th Grammy win and ended it with a box-office-breaking concert film, a headline-grabbing (even in the sports section) romance and a record-setting seventh Song of the Year nomination, taking the title from Paul McCartney and Lionel Richie, who have six each. Her Eras tour played to sold-out stadiums across America (she’s booked a return for fall 2024). At each stop she powered through three-hour shows that traced her evolving musical moods. “It’s not just a tour; I just sort of feel like my life finally feels like it makes sense,” Swift said of the journey. This newly revised edition of People travels a similar path, from Swift’s…

‘I SEE ME PADDING CROSS YOUR WOODEN FLOORS, WITH MY EAGLES T-SHIRT HANGING FROM THE DOOR’—FROM ‘GOLD RUSH,’ 2020 ‘I FEEL THE LAVENDER HAZE CREEPIN’ UP ON ME/ SURREAL, I’M DAMNED IF I DO GIVE A DAMN WHAT PEOPLE SAY’—FROM ‘LAVENDER HAZE,’ 2022 ‘THANKS FOR THE DUETS AND THE DRESSING ROOM HEART-TO-HEARTS’—TAYLOR SWIFT TO PHOEBE BRIDGERS AFTER THEIR FINAL ERAS APPEARANCE, VIA INSTAGRAM ‘IT’S OKAY, BABY, YOU AIN’T GOTTA WORRY, KARMA NEVER GETS LAZY …’—‘KARMA,’ 2022, TAYLOR SWIFT, FEAT. ICE SPICE…

I counted days, I counted milesTo see you there, to see you thereIt’s been a long time coming, butIt’s you and me, that’s my whole world THE LINES ARE FROM “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince,” the song Taylor Swift played to kick off each night of her Eras tour. They acknowledge to sold-out audiences that it was, indeed, a long time coming both for the star and for her fans, many of whom had waited five years, since 2018’s Reputation tour, to see her play live. (A planned 2020 outing was canceled because of the pandemic.) In the ensuing years Swift had released four new albums, rerecorded three earlier ones and evolved beyond mere pop icon into one who stood for artists’ rights, for women and girls claiming their…

BORN DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS IN 1989, Taylor Swift was named after her mother’s favorite singer, James Taylor. Parents Scott and Andrea, whose careers in finance made them a comfortable living, raised Taylor and her younger brother Austin (born in 1992) in West Reading, Pa., on a Christmas tree farm purchased from a client. When young Taylor wasn’t picking praying-mantis pods out of the trees for pocket money, she was horseback riding or dreaming up fairy tales. “I had the most magical childhood,” she told Rolling Stone in 2009, “running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.” The Swifts assumed their daughter would follow them into the business world, but instead she fell under the spell of her grandmother Marjorie, an opera singer who had hosted a music…

“NOBODY IN COUNTRY MUSIC ‘made it’ the same way,” 17-year-old Taylor Swift told CMT in 2007, just a year after the release of her debut album. “There’s no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.” Taylor herself had been working at it since she was a child, and it was finally paying off. As newly anointed Nashville royalty, she went from singing about Tim McGraw to serenading him at award shows. Reba McEntire sent her a postcard, which she proudly displayed in her bedroom. Brad Paisley personally selected Taylor to open for him on his tour, joining a lengthy list of legends she’d supported, including Rascal Flatts, George Strait, McGraw and Faith Hill. Taylor spent much of that year on the road—“I’m home two or…

When Taylor Swift was named an Entertainer of the Year by Entertainment Weekly, she spoke with People’s sister publication. Following are excerpts from that December 2010 story. You know you’re a pop culture force when you straighten your hair and it makes national headlines. “I thought it was so amusing,” Taylor Swift marvels about the attention placed on her non-wavy tresses at Nov. 21’s American Music Awards. “Nobody knew it was me.” And so 2010 will go down in history as the year we all saw Taylor Swift differently. The 20-year-old kicked things off with a No. 2 single debut (“Today Was a Fairytale”), a hit movie (Valentine’s Day) and four Grammy wins, including Album of the Year for her 2008 album Fearless. But there was one achievement—the Oct. 25…