Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
CHRISTMAS TREE FARM
Start with a classic combo: a little girl and a super-sized dream. Add an off-the-charts SCOOP! of songwriting talent and another generous SCOOP! of fierce vocals. Sprinkle on a sparkling smile and brilliant baby blues. Drizzle a coating of that girl-next-door magic. And bam!But don’t for a minute think that’s all it takes to reach the megastardom of Taylor Swift.
This is not some sugarcoated, kitty-unicorn fairy tale—well it is, sort of. But the thing is, Taylor personifies drive, commitment, and hard work. She’s been tenacious since she was a kid living in Pennsylvania with her parents, begging to go to Nashville in search of a record deal.
The SCOOP! Deets:
Full name: Taylor Alison Swift
Birthday: December 13, 1989
Birthplace: West Reading, Pennsylvania
Height: 5’11”
Instagram: 134 million followers
Homes: New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, Rhode Island
Cats: Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson, Benjamin Button
Boyfriend: British actor Joe Alwyn
If you read all the fabulous SCOOP! books (but of course you will) you’ll see a theme: Artists aren’t born covered in stardust. And they usually don’t become household names overnight. That’s just not on the regular. The vast majority of them work at it for a long time—like years—before you ever hear their names and know their faces. And Taylor is no exception.
But success did come early to her, and that’s in part because she knew exactly what she wanted early on. Taylor set out at eleven years old to make her dreams reality. She had a plan, and with the unwavering support of her parents, she kicked it into action. By the time she turned thirty, Taylor had sold more than fifty million albums!But let’s back up to the beginning. Because this is a story worth telling. And that’s what you’re here for.Taylor Swift was born almost two weeks before Christmas on December 13, 1989. Her parents, Andrea and Scott, gave her a gender-neutral name in case she grew up to work in corporate America, like they did.“My mom thought it was cool that if you got a business card that said ‘Taylor’ you wouldn’t know if it was a guy or a girl,” Tay told Rolling Stone magazine. “She wanted me to be a business person in a business world.”
Taylor spent the first decade of her life on her parents’ Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, riding the family’s horses almost as soon as she could walk. (Check out the video for her single “Christmas Tree Farm” for some sweet home movies from that era.) She said it was awesome to have so much space to roam. It’s also where she fell in love with the holiday season.
It didn’t hurt that her parents had money—they both worked in finance—so life was pretty cushy on the farm. But her parents gave her a gift more important to her future career than money or a nice house: they let her be a dreamer.“I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head,” she told Rolling Stone.
She grew up very close to her mom and dad, and still is. “I know I’m so lucky that I got two perfect parents, you know?” Taylor told the Washington Post when she was first hitting it big. Taylor also has a brother, Austin, who came along when she was just over two years old. (Austin is an actor now.) The two blonds grew up on the farm until Taylor was around ten, then the family moved to an even bigger house in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Taylor was in fifth grade then.
If you had to guess what kind of student Taylor was, what would you say? If you said perfectionist, you’re right. She was all about excellent grades and being a good girl. And that comes up over and over again in Taylor’s interviews, dating back to when she was a teenager, through adulthood. She was a people pleaser. Sometimes that was a good thing, and it worked in her favor—and sometimes it wasn’t so great. (More on that later!)
Regardless of the pros and cons, it was how she was built. Taylor was also a romantic with a colorful imagination. She rode horses competitively, but she says being so tall made her awkward and gawky, and she wasn’t cut out for team sports. (You gotta think the basketball and volleyball coaches wanted her with that height, right?)
Anyway, it wasn’t sports that took up space in her brain. It was the stories she wrote. She preferred poetry and singing along to LeAnn Rimes CDs to hoops, which didn’t sit well with the other kids in her class.Even if it wasn’t always the cool thing to do, according to her classmates, Taylor stayed true to her interests. In fifth grade she entered a national poetry contest with a poem about a monster in her closet—and won! The poem was published in an anthology, and even her class thought that was pretty amazing.
It was around this time that Taylor dove into musical theater. She first got the acting bug in a school play and auditioned for the Berks County Youth Theatre Academy. First show: Annie. She played one of the orphans. Even though she had a small role, Taylor stood out from the cast, and it wasn’t just because she was so much taller than the other girls. She had mad stage presence, and of course, the pipes. The director saw that Taylor was a natural, and he never cast her in a small role again. During her time with the theater company, Taylor played Maria in The Sound of Music, Sandy in Grease, and Kim MacAfee in Bye Bye Birdie. (Had to be some jealous actresses in that company, right?)
It was also around this time that her passion for country music took hold. It’s not like she lived in a place where kids listened to country. But she was all in for Shania Twain, the Chicks, and LeAnn Rimes. (She got her first LeAnn Rimes CD when she was just six.) She started trying to sing like her favorite artists. And at some point, she realized she was more into singing than acting. LeAnn Rimes hit it big at thirteen, and Taylor figured she could, too.
