By Angelika Mohr Country singer Taylor Swift had 2 UK stops on her 50-city ‘Fearless’ tour. On the 23rd of November 2009, she performed in front of 13 000 continuously screaming London fans, most of them girls in their early teens, at Wembley Arena. Although the concert had ‘sold out’ months ago, a friend and myself managed to get our hands on two ‘standing’ tickets only a week before the night itself. So, although it was a school night, prices were high and we had no idea what ‘standing’ implied, except that we would be on our feet for hours, we headed to Wembley. What we did not anticipate was that the designated standing area intended for us was right next to the stage, within touching distance of the singer, and that with the best possible view in the whole arena.

Swift gave an extraordinary live performance. Her act included a rising castle with turrets, Shakespearian dresses, rusty barrels used as drums and a waterfall which soaked her from head to toe during the finale. She retained her Country star status is colourful, sparkling costumes and high cowboy boots, making the most out of her long, blonde curls.

Her most famous single, ‘Love Story’, based on the story of Romeo and Juliet, which played on all of the UK’s best radio stations for months after it was released on September 12th 2008, is familiar to almost everyone. It was the song that made her famous, especially here in the UK. On March 1st 2009, it reached No. 2 in the UK singles chart. Over the world, it has also been legally downloaded over four million times, making it the most downloaded Country song in history. ‘Love Story’ was the lead single for her second album, ‘Fearless’, which, released in November 2008, made Taylor Swift the USA’s highest selling artist of 2008 with over four million album sales.

The now nineteen year old Taylor Alison Swift was born in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania on December 13th 1989. She began writing songs aged ten and by the age of eleven, she had travelled to Nashville, Tennessee, with her mother and distributed her homemade CD to every label in the city. Although her talent was not immediately recognised, her spirits were not dampened and the experience encouraged her to learn to play a 12-string guitar. After learning only 3 chords, she went on to write her first song, ‘Lucky You’. In the following years, she developed her song writing interest, sang karaoke and kept returning to Nashville, writing and performing with local artists. By the time she was fourteen, her family had moved to a Nashville suburb to support her music career. She released her debut single, ‘Tim McGraw’, one of my personal favourites, in 2006, aged sixteen. She wrote or co-wrote all records on her following debut album, mostly about her own personal experiences, as she has stated on several occasions. She said: “I write songs so that the person I did not say these words to, can hear them” (Teen Vogue: March 2009). ‘Taylor Swift’ was released in the UK almost three years later, in August 2009.

After ‘Love Story’, Swift’s rise to fame was rapid. She has, since then, been nominated for a Grammy award, and, among many others, has won six American Music Awards. Perhaps most famously, she was the first Country singer to ever receive a MTV Music Video Award, where, during her acceptance speech, she was interrupted by Kanye West, who did not seem to agree with the jury’s decision to choose Taylor’s video for ‘You Belong With Me’ over Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’. On November 14th 2009, Swift set another record as having the most singles, eight in total, by a female artist on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at the same time.

Apart from her music, Swift has shown an interest in acting. She appeared on CSI in March 2009 and in several movies, mostly ‘as herself’, including The Hannah Montana Movie, in which she performed the song ‘Crazier’. She will also play the part of Samantha Kenny in the much anticipated ‘Valentine’s Day’, which will be released in the UK on February 12th 2010.

Her modest attitude, despite her early success, and her confident, bright personality make Taylor Swift particularly popular with young fans. However, her music has an air of sophistication which makes it equally appealing to an older audience. This has secured her a wide range of fans of different age and gender. Taylor Swift is, I believe, a young person with a real musical talent, and a talent for performing, both of which played a key role in her rapid, and deserved, rise to fame.