Ten Things About... Taylor Swift
She has sold 26 million albums worldwide and has seven Grammy Awards under her belt, all at the tender age of 23. Her current album Red won her her first UK number one album and achieved the biggest first-week sales in the US for over a decade.
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Taylor Swift with MTV EMA awards for 'Best Female', 'Best Live' and 'Best Look'
As Swift debuts the video for her new single '22', we've had a rummage around and dug out ten snippets of info you might not have known about the serial dater...
1. Taylor Alison Swift was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on December 13 1989. Her father is a financial adviser and her mother worked in marketing before having children. Sw! ift is very close to her parents and has said: "It's cool to have pie-in-the-sky Dad, down-to-earth Mum." She also has a 21-year-old brother called Austin.
2. Before she left for Nashville at the age of 14 to chase her dreams of being a country star, Swift grew up on a Christmas tree farm. While appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, she spoke about how she was too small to help out with the heavy lifting, and so her job was to make sure the trees were free from praying mantis pods. She told Leno: "I forgot to check one time and they hatched all over these people's house. There were hundreds of thousands of them."
3. It may have topped the charts in four countries and received a Grammy nomination for 'Record of the Year', but Swift told us in an interview that her recent hit 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' took her just 25 minutes to write. Wow! Swift by name and swift by nature!
4. We don't know if she's hiding a secret rebel in there somewhere but if she is, she's hiding it well. When asked in an interview what her favourite things were, Swift's list included cats, oceans, hydrangea flowers, arts and crafts, blankets, fireplaces, changing seasons, green eyes and writing notes. Seriously, Taylor? You might as well add raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens to the list.
5. Taylor has had more celebrity boyfriends than Brangelina have had kids. Reported beaus include...*deep breath* Joe Jonas, John Mayer, Cory Monteith, Taylor Lautner, Zac Efro! n, Jake G! yllenhall, Connor Kennedy and Harry Styles. She has recently been linked to Ed Sheeran but has denied the rumours. She did however admit she has a soft spot for redheads, saying: "I would do a ginger. I like Rupert Grint, the guy from the Harry Potter films." Run Rupert, run!
6. Most of us deal with a break-up by drowning our sorrows with a bottle (or two) of wine and drunk-dialling the ex in question, but not Taylor. Instead of slurring down the phone at 4am, she turns her heartbreak into hits and has penned several songs about past relationships. Her most famous (and obvious) being 'Dear John', a scathing song about her ex John Mayer. Mayer didn't take too kindly to the track, saying that "it was a really lousy thing for her to do", but ever-fair Swift has recently insisted that her exes should feel free to return the favour and write songs about her.
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7. Swift has previously said that she would love to collaborate with Taylor Hanson (of 'MMMBop' fame) and English singer/songwriter Imogen Heap, both answers we might expect from a squeaky clean country/pop songstress such as herself. But the 23-year-old has also revealed her love of hip-hop and has expressed a wish to work with rapper Eminem. Hmm, we wonder what Mr Mathers thinks of that?8. Swift isn't short of a penny or two, and topped the list of the world's highest-paid celebrities under 30 last year. According to US business magazine Forbes, she earned $57 million (37 million) between May 2011 and May 2012. Don't worry though, she likes to share and was named the 'most charitable celebrity of 2012'. Fancy lending us a quid or two, Taylor?
9. It's no secret that Taylor has dabbled in acting, bagging herself roles in 2010 rom-com Valentine's Day and 2012's The Lorax, but Swift was just inches away from her biggest role yet when she auditioned for the part of ponine in Tom Hooper's Oscar-winning film Les Misrables. Producers reportedly strongly considered her for the role, but she was eventually pipped to the post by the relatively unknown Samantha Barks.
10. Swift counts Selena Gomez and Emma Stone among her best showbiz chums but she insists that they never discuss work when they see each other, instead choosing to talk about "relationships, feelings, love and boys".