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.
Republic Records’ Monte and Avery Lipman on How Taylor Swift, Post Malone, Prince, Partnerships and Persistence Have Made Them the Top Label of the Past Decade
variety.comJem Aswad Executive Editor, Music It seems incredibly corny to say that Republic Records’ ethos is contained in the label’s first-ever monster hit, Chumbawamba’s 1997 anthem “Tubthumping”: “I get knocked down, I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down.” OK, it is incredibly corny — but it fits.
Republic and its founders, brothers Monte and Avery Lipman, have been the most successful label of the past decade because of their entrepreneurship, ferocious work ethic and the fact that they just don’t give up. “It actually goes back to our childhood,” Avery says. “When we were little kids, we had a lemonade stand, and when no one came around, we actually went to people’s doors and knocked.
I mean, imagine answering your doorbell and seeing a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old selling lemonade — how do you say no?” he laughs. “But it was the sense of resourcefulness,” Monte chimes in. “When we were kids, we were flat broke, but our feeling was, rather than just sit there and wallow in the fact that we didn’t have any money, let’s do something about it.
Let’s figure this out.” That ethos has not only led Republic to lead market share nearly every year for the past decade-plus — it’s been Variety’s Hitmakers label of the year four out of the last seven years, and appears headed to a fifth — they’ve also attracted an almost impossibly long list of the world’s biggest artists: Taylor Swift, Post Malone, Ariana Grande, Drake, Morgan Wallen, the Weeknd, Lil Wayne, Pearl Jam, Nicki Minaj, John Mellencamp, Florence + the Machine, John Legend and Metro Boomin, along with Prince, Amy Winehouse and even Stevie Wonder.
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