Taylor Swift

Swift later sent Church her first gold record with a note: "Thanks for playing too long and too loud on the Flatts tour. I sincerely appreciate it. Taylor". Read Less

While Swift wrote many of the songs on tour, she made a conscious effort not to include "road songs": "As a 16-year-old girl, I could never relate to those songs about playing a different city every night. I want to write about feelings and love and the lack of love". Swift wrote seven of the album's songs alone, including two singles, and co-wrote the remaining six with songwriters Liz Rose, John Rich, Colbie Caillat and Hillary Lindsey. She co-produced the album with Nathan Chapman. Musically, it has been said that the record is characterized by "loud, lean guitars and rousing choruses", with the occasional "bit of fiddle and banjo tucked into the mix". The New York Times described Swift as "one of pop's finest songwriters, country's foremost pragmatist and more in touch with her inner life than most adults". The Village Voice felt she displayed "preternatural wisdom and inclusiveness", "masterfully avoiding the typical diarist's pitfalls of trite banality and pseudo-profound bullshit". Rolling Stone described her as "a songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for verse-chorus-bridge architecture" whose "squirmingly intimate and true" songs seemed to be "literally ripped from a suburban girl's diary". USA Today found it "a pleasure to hear a gifted teenager who sounds like a gifted teenager, rather than a mouthpiece for a bunch of older pros' collective notion of adolescent yearning." The New Yorker described it as an album "without a bad track", adding that "the album's finest effort, "Fifteen", will feature in yearbook quotes for years". Read Less

John Paul White has said working with Swift was "a revelation. She had some great ideas. We had complete freedom. It truly was a collaboration. We brought the melancholy and the darker angle. Taylor was bringing the melody and the chords." Rolling Stone described the song as "Swift's prettiest ballad" and wondered whether the alt-country folk song was "a one-off novelty, a trial balloon cred-move, or the stirrings of a "grown-up" style". Read Less

It was released as the album's lead single and, as of July 2012, has sold over one million copies in the United States. Swift's second contribution to the album, "Eyes Open", was written solely by the singer and produced by Nathan Chapman. Read Less

She wrote ten of the album's sixteen songs alone; the remaining six were co-written with Max Martin, Liz Rose, Dan Wilson, Ed Sheeran. Nathan Chapman served as the album's lead producer but Jeff Bhasker, Butch Walker, Jacknife Lee, Dann Huff and Shellback also produced individual tracks. Chapman has said he encouraged Swift "to branch out and to test herself in other situations". She has described the collaborative process as "an apprenticeship" which taught her to "paint with different colors". Red examines Swift's attraction to drama-filled relationships; she believes that, since writing the record, such relationships no longer appeal to her. Musically, while there is some experimentation with "slick, electronic beats", "the pop sheen is limited to a handful of tracks sprinkled among more recognisably Swiftian fare". Rolling Stone enjoyed "watching Swift find her pony-footing on Great Songwriter Mountain. She often succeeds in joining the Joni/Carole King tradition of stark-relief emotional mapping... Her self-discovery project is one of the best stories in pop." The Guardian described Swift as a "Brünnhilde of a rockstar" and characterized Red as "another chapter in one of the finest fantasies pop music has ever constructed". USA Today felt that the "engaging" record saw Swift "write ever-more convincingly -- and wittily and painfully -- about the messy emotions of a young twentysomething nearing the end of her transition from girl to woman". The Los Angeles Times noted the exploration of "more nuanced relationship issues" on "an unapologetically big pop record that opens new sonic vistas for her". Read Less

Swift later said she had seen the sketch: "I was laughing the entire time and then I realized that, as I was watching it, I was making the face she was making". Read Less

When Swift later presented Shelton with the Academy's Best Male Vocalist award, "the two faced off, showing each other their ultra-surprised looks".

The merits of Swift as a feminist have been widely discussed. She has been described by Jezebel as "a feminist's nightmare": "Her image of being good and pure plays right into how much the patriarchy fetishizes virginity, loves purity, and celebrates women who know their place as delicate flowers". A Village Voice music critic, using supporting evidence from Swift's body of work, dismissed such criticisms as "shallow and gross, in that special way that things get gross when you cram shaded and living work through an ideological sieve like you're mechanically separating chicken". It has been said that anti-Swift feminists "criticize Taylor for being repressive and perpetuating a patriarchal virgin/whore dichotomy by being repressive and perpetuating a virgin/whore dichotomy... When people dismiss the stories that Taylor Swift writes as unrealistic, unfeminist pap or dismiss Taylor Swift herself as a sexist figure – even if we take them at face value, even if we pretend that Taylor Swift is indeed a virgin who thinks having sex is a bad thing and falling in love and having babies is the best experience a girl can have, they're still wrong. They're still wrong to dismiss her. Because by dismissing her, they're saying that those experiences and those beliefs are invalid and girls shouldn't have them – and that if girls do have them, then they're inferior in some way (unfeminist, unintelligent, uncool, whatever)... Read Less

Taylor, who first met Swift when she was eighteen, has said that, "we just hit it off. I loved her songs, and her presence on stage was so great". Read Less

Swift is attached to play Joni Mitchell in the adaptation of Sheila Weller's book Girls Like Us, a project currently in development. Read Less

Swift is a supporter of arts education. In 2010, she donated $75,000 to Nashville's Hendersonville High School to help refurbish the school auditorium's sound and lighting systems. Read Less

The 7,500-square-foot building is scheduled to open in 2014 and will facilitate new programs and workshops for teenagers and senior citizens. The space will include three classrooms and an exhibit space, and will house interactive activities such as a musical petting zoo and a "wet" classroom space to make concert posters and other art projects. Museum officials have decided to name it The Taylor Swift Education Center and the singer will be involved in an advisory capacity. Read Less

Swift promotes children's literacy. In 2009, she donated $250,000 to various schools around the country that she had either attended or had other associations with. The money was used to buy books, fund educational programs and help pay teachers' salaries. In 2010, she took part in a live webcast, Read Now! with Taylor Swift, broadcast exclusively in US schools to celebrate Scholastic's Read Every Day campaign. In 2011, Swift donated 6,000 Scholastic books to Reading Public Library, Pennsylvania and, in 2012, she donated 14,000 books to Nashville Public Library, Tennessee. Most of the books were placed in circulation; the rest were gifted to children from low-income families, preschools and daycare centers. Read Less

The song was made available for digital download, with all proceeds donated to cancer-related charities. Swift has met with many sick fans through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She has also made private visits to hospitals such as St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Ronald McDonald House.

Swift has encouraged young people to volunteer in their local community as part of Global Youth Service Day and has promoted The @15 Fund, a social change platform underwritten by Best Buy, which gives teenagers the opportunity to direct the company's philanthropy. In 2007, she launched a campaign to protect children from online predators, in partnership with the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police. Also in 2007, she supported an Allstate campaign which promotes safe teenage driving. In 2009, Swift recorded a Sound Matters PSA to make listeners aware of the importance of listening "responsibly". She appeared in a Got Milk? campaign in 2010. Swift has donated auctionable items to a large number of charities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the UNICEF Tap Project, Oxfam International, Habitat For Humanity, MusiCares and Feeding America. She has also performed at a number of benefit concerts, including for the Food Bank For New York City, the Reading, Writing & Rhythm Foundation, Christmas for Kids and Shriners Hospitals for Children. Read Less

Swift later described the First Lady as "a role model". Read Less