Taylor Swift
The curly-haired country teenager with a guitar who ended the 2000s as the name on everyone's radio. "Love Story" and Fearless made her a household name; the Kanye moment made her a headline. Everything after is a much bigger story—this entry is about when she was new.
Taylor Swift released her self-titled debut album in 2006, which became the longest-charting album on the Billboard 200 of the entire 2000s decade. Fearless followed on November 11, 2008, on Big Machine Records; "Love Story" (released September 2008) peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the country chart, while "You Belong with Me" reached number two on the Hot 100, marking her transition to mainstream pop radio.
Fearless spent eleven non-consecutive weeks at number one on the Billboard 200—the longest run for any female country album—and sold 3.217 million copies in the United States during 2009, becoming that year's best-selling album. When Swift accepted the MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video in September 2009, Kanye West famously interrupted her acceptance speech. In February 2010, Fearless won Album of the Year at the 52nd Grammy Awards, and at 20 she became the youngest artist yet to win it—a record that stood until 2020. This entry covers only her 2006–2009 breakthrough era—everything after, from the stadium decades to the re-recorded albums, lies beyond this site's window.
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