Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at 15, she signed her first record deal.
Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008.
Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US' best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, and Swift became the youngest Album of the Year winner.
Dear Grammys: The Time Is Now for a Songwriter of the Year Award (Guest Column)
variety.comNick Jarjour As we head into Grammy weekend, Harvey Mason Jr, the CEO of the Recording Academy, deserves to be commended for restructuring the organization to credit and support songwriters like never before.
Among the positive changes under his watch: establishing a songwriter wing and including writer credits on albums. Seeing as Harvey is a publisher and songwriter himself, music makers, and those who represent them, are looking to him to endorse a Grammy category for songwriter of the year.Its dumbfounding that the Grammys do not recognize songwriting as a craft.
After all, writers are indispensable to the creative process and embedded into the very core of music. As creatives, songwriters are consistently under-credited and largely under-compensated, receiving the smallest share of the streaming pie — Spotify and the labels take four times what the songwriter is allotted — and rarely allowed to participate in merchandise based on their lyrics or to share in master points for records.
As it turns out, neglected songwriters have existed since the dawn of popular American music. Luckily Canadian, British, Chinese and Swedish Grammy equivalents have implemented distinguished “Songwriter of the Year” categories for years to ensure that these songwriters can enjoy the same benefits and provenance such an award gives its recipients.The effects of the pandemic have rapidly transitioned the music industry into a song economy, and record labels are increasingly turning to hitmakers, like my client Starrah, to elevate the potential of their artists with chart-topping songs.
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