On the surface, Taylor played it cool and acted as if all these experiences were just a normal part of life. Inside, though, she could scarcely believe how thrilling her existence had become. It is all so far from the world in which she grew up.
How different it could all have been … Taylor Swift was never meant to be a singer-songwriter; she was supposed to become a stockbroker. Her parents even chose her Christian name with a business path in mind. Her mother, Andrea, selected a gender-neutral name for her baby girl so that when she grew up and applied for jobs in the male-dominated finance industry no one would know if she were male or female. It was a plan that came from a loving place, but it was not one that would ever be realised. Instead, millions and millions of fans across the world would know exactly which gender Andrea’s firstborn was, without ever meeting her.
In Taylor’s track ‘The Best Day’, which touchingly evokes a childhood full of wonder, she sings of her ‘excellent’ father whose ‘strength is making me stronger’. That excellent father is Scott Kingsley Swift, who studied business at the University of Delaware. He lived in the Brown residence hall. There, he made lots of friends, one of whom, Michael DiMuzio, would later cross paths with Taylor professionally. Scott graduated with a first-class degree and set about building his career in similarly impressive style. Perhaps a knack for business is in the blood: his father and grandfather also worked in finance.
Scott set up his own investment-banking firm called the Swift Group, which offered clear, well-informed financial advice under the Merrill Lynch umbrella. He had joined the world-renowned firm in the 1980s and rose quickly, eventually becoming the first vice president. He often travelled with his work and it was on one such trip, to Harris, in Texas, that he met a young lady, six years his junior, called Andrea Gardener Finlay. Like him, she worked in finance, as a marketing manager in an advertising agency, and was a determined and highly driven soul.
Although the two found that they had a great deal in common, Andrea was focused more on her career than thoughts of marriage when Scott first crossed her path. She had needed to work hard to break into the finance industry, which in the late 1970s was an almost entirely male sector. Yet break in she did, and she could afford to feel immense satisfaction at having done so. As Taylor later told a television interviewer, her mother had, prior to meeting Scott, ‘a career on her own and lived alone’ and was financially independent. Taylor’s knowledge of this dimension of her mother’s past has filled her with respect for Andrea and shaped her own approach to work and life.
Having worked so hard and been so strong, Andrea was not in the mood to take her eye off the ball. Yet when she met Scott he melted her heart and they quickly fell in love. They married in Texas on 20 February 1988 but moved to Pennsylvania, settling in West Reading in Berks County. Then, at the age of 30, Andrea found out she was pregnant with her first child. The girl was born on 13 December 1989 in Wyomissing. They named her Taylor Alison, and she showed very early signs of the star quality that would propel her to fame later in life. Within hours of her birth, the baby girl had already made quite an impression on a member of staff at the hospital. A paediatrician told Andrea: ‘She’s a really good-natured baby, but she knows exactly what she wants and how to get it!’ At the time, Andrea wondered what on earth the man was talking about. How could he possibly read the personality of a baby just a few hours old? In time, Andrea would have to agree that his description had been right on the money.
For those who believe in ‘birth order’ – the theory that a significant amount of your character and life experience is determined by the order in which you are born into your family: as first, middle, last or only child – Taylor’s firstborn status is pertinent. Firstborns enjoy uninterrupted attention from their parents until a sibling arrives. Typical characteristics of firstborns are a pronounced eagerness to please, and an increased tendency to conform to rules. However, firstborns are likely to show responsibility or leadership in crisis situations.
They can also be nurturing and caring, but are vulnerable to episodes of self-criticism and jealousy – emotions that were first sparked the day they realised they were no longer the only child of the household, and saw their parents’ attention and affections move in part towards someone else. As for astrologers, they ascribe mixed traits to Taylor’s star sign of Sagittarius. Those born under this sign are said to be, on the positive side, honest, generous and oozing with charisma. Less positively, they can also be reckless, superficial and lacking in tact. Other famous Sagittarians include Nicki Minaj, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra and Brad Pitt.
Taylor first lived on the 11-acre Christmas-tree farm that had been the property of Scott’s father in the past. Based in the town of Cumru, it provided a useful additional income for the family and allowed them to live in increasing splendour as Taylor grew up. To her, the place seemed enormous. ‘And it was the most magical, wonderful place in the world,’ she has said. She could run free and let her imagination run riot, which would prove key to her emotional and creative development. While some childhoods squeeze all artistic aspirations out of a youngster, Taylor’s childhood nurtured and encouraged her dreams. In her inspirational book The Artist’s Way, Julia Coleman outlines compellingly how important this is to any young creative. Had Taylor’s dreams been squashed as a child, she might well have ended up working in finance as her parents had originally envisaged; another would-be artist who slipped through the net.
At three years of age, Taylor got a younger sibling in the form of brother Austin, who was born on 4 March 1993. Within two years of his arrival, Andrea decided to set her career to one side and become a full-time mother. Andrea’s influence on Taylor remained profound. ‘She totally raised me to be logical and practical,’ said Taylor. ‘I was brought up with such a strong woman in my life and I think that had a lot to do with me not wanting to do anything halfway.’ Taylor speaks about her parents in contrasting yet balancing tones. Andrea’s rational and down-to-earth nature is balanced by Scott, who, says Taylor, is ‘just a big teddy bear who tells me that everything I do is perfect’. Where Andrea is described as ‘realistic’, Scott is described as ‘head-in-the-clouds’ and optimistic.
Yet he is not all dreamy glass-half-full chirpiness: his sound financial know-how has been of great help to Taylor, particularly since she became famous. ‘Business-wise, he’s brilliant,’ she said. Although her parents had a financial route already mapped out for Taylor in their minds, she had other ideas. At the age of three she began singing, even delivering an impressive rendition of the vocally tricky Righteous Brothers’ classic ‘Unchained Melody’. She enjoyed the feeling of sweetly singing the lyrics of songs, and she found she had a strong memory for words and melodies. When Scott and Andrea took her to see films at the cinema, she would sing songs from the soundtrack on the way home, having somehow been able to commit the lyrics and tune to memory during one listen. Taylor told the Daily Mail that her parents would be ‘freaked out’ by this feat of musical memory. ‘I retained music more than anything else,’ she added.
Where had this magic come from? To find musical deftness in the family tree, we need to hop back a generation to Taylor’s maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay. A charismatic and lively lady, Finlay became a successful opera singer, admired in many countries across the world. She had married a man whose work in the oil industry took him around the world. This meant she performed in countries as far apart as America, Singapore and Puerto Rico.
Ten years after giving birth to Andrea, Finlay and her family settled in America. Here, she was handed a host of new opportunities, including membership of the Houston Grand Opera. She appeared in musicals of an operatic bent – such as Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Smetana’s The Bartered Bride –