Taylor Swift was born in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Swift's influences include her grandmother, who was an opera singer, and LeAnn Rimes. At the age of ten, Swift began to perform around her hometown, singing at karaoke contests, festivals, and fairs. Her first exposure to the music business consisted of recording demo tapes at a studio. At age 11, Taylor made her first trip to Nashville in hopes of attaining a record deal by handing out a demo tape she had made of her singing along to karaoke songs. Taylor returned to Pennsylvania without a record deal but remained confident in her ability, writing her first song, "Lucky You".

Her big break came at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, when her rendition of the national anthem moved the crowd. Within a few months she was featured as a rising star in an Abercrombie & Fitch campaign. The family decided to move to Hendersonville, Tennessee, an outlying Nashville suburb. When she performed at Nashville's premier songwriters' cafe, The Bluebird Cafe, she caught the attention of Scott Borchetta who signed her to his new label, Big Machine Records.

Swift's first single, "Tim McGraw", was released to radio in Summer of 2006. The video debuted in July 2006 on Great American Country. On October 24, 2006, her self-titled CD was released. The CD, on which Swift wrote or co-wrote all of the songs, peaked at #19 on the sales charts and sold more than 61,000 during its first week. The song "Tim McGraw" peaked at #6 on the chart week of January 27, 2007. The video set a record by appearing for 30 consecutive weeks on GAC's fan-voted weekly Top 20 music countdown show, and the video reached #1 on CMT's video charts.

Since her success, she has appeared on Good Morning America and at the 2006 Academy of Country Music Awards. She also won "Breakthrough Video of the Year" on the 2007 CMT Music Awards with "Tim McGraw". Her pursuit of country music stardom was the subject of "GAC Short Cuts", a part-documentary, part-music video series airing since the summer of 2006 on the country music channel Great American Country.

Swift sang the national anthem and performed at various events since then. One of her biggest mainstream performances was on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on February 13, 2007, where she performed her single, "Tim McGraw."

On May 15, 2007, Swift performed her Gold single, "Tim McGraw," at the Academy of Country Music Awards. She sang the song to Tim McGraw in the audience, and introduced herself for the first time to him. Taylor has been an opening act for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill on their Soul2Soul 2007 tour. She is currently touring with Brad Paisley and has opened in the past for George Strait and Rascal Flatts as well.

On August 30, Taylor was named one of 5 nominees for the 2007 CMA Horizon Award. The CMA Awards will be televised on November 7.