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.
Life in the tucked away village where "Morrisons didn't last two minutes"
manchestereveningnews.co.ukOn the border of Greater Manchester and Merseyside lies the former coal mining village of Bryn. Like many northern mining towns it bears the scars of its industrial past - while retaining a tight knit community keen to build a brighter future.
According to locals here, the name Bryn comes from a village in Neath Port Talbot in South Wales, which also became synonymous with heavy industry.
But it could also come from the Welsh for 'hill' or Old English for 'burning fire'. The Bryn Hall Colliery employed over 500 people at its peak in the early 1900s, but was abandoned shortly after WWI.
While the remains of the colliery are now under private land, it sits under the northeast corner of the town's nature reserve which the community has helped to transform into a pretty visitor attraction.
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