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.
Victoria Wood ‘used comedy to laugh through horrific trauma of childhood neglect’
mirror.co.ukVictoria Wood ’s wit and warmth made her one of the country’s best-loved comedians and a true national treasure – but behind the laughter lay the trauma of a tough childhood.
Here an exclusive extract from Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood, by Jasper Rees, tells how the comedian, who died of cancer aged 62 in 2016, was shaped by her early life...
Victoria Wood had an adoring female audience long before she drew her first breath. “The baby’s kicking”, her expectant mother would say. “Come and put your hand on my tummy.” Victoria’s sisters Penelope, seven, and Rosalind, two-and-three-quarters, would feel their unborn sibling beating out a rhythm with her feet.
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