Taylor Swift Sweden | Sweden's Largest Fansite Dedicated To Taylor Swift

• Vocal Event of the Year (Highway Don’t Care)
• Video of the Year (Highway Don’t Care)
• Single Record of the Year (Highway Don’t Care)
• Female Vocalist of the Year
• Entertainer of the Year

"She reached out — she’s very hands-on and in control of what she’s doing. So she came to my little studio in Venice [Calif.], showed up by herself, with no entourage. She brought her guitar and sat down and said, ‘Hey, thanks for meeting with me – I’ve got this song I’d love you to produce. Here it is.’ And she played this song all the way through on her guitar on my couch, and said, ‘What do you think?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s amazing.’ Here’s a complete thought, a complete thing. She did the homework, she laid all the groundwork beforehand. There’s no smoke and mirrors or fluke or trendiness going on with her – this is music she writes from her experiences. That’s a real artist.

 

I’ll tell you one other little tidbit about Taylor’s sessions, to give you an idea of how tough this girl is. It was a summer day, and in my vocal booth, sometimes I turn the air conditioning off so it won’t make noise while we’re recording. I had kind of forgotten about that, and she’d been in there for a long time. And she was like, ‘Can I come out? It’s kind of hot in here.’ And she came out, and she’s all sweating – it was hotboxed in there. I’m about to kill this poor girl! I almost sent Taylor Swift to the hospital for dehydration! And she did not complain, she did not diva out – she came to work. I was just mortified. [laughs]

 

But that was one of the big things where I realized Man, she’s a really hard worker. Talent is important, but the common denominator with all these people we’re talking about is that they’re the hardest working people out there. And that’s all you can ask for, as a producer – to ride with them. You need a buddy. You [the artist] need someone there where, like, if you’re tired, you keep going, you pick each other up, you encourage each other, you challenge each other. You always want to be around people who are smarter and better than you."

It’s a crowded field for Best New Artist at this year’s GRAMMYs. Ed Sheeran,James Blake, Kacey Musgraves, Kendrick Lamar, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis all bring convincing arguments to the table, from very different corners of the music world, no less. But Taylor Swift had no trouble making up her mind. For her, it’s all about touring comrade/collaborator Sheeran, and Billboard caught up with Swift to get the details.

 

"I want him to win everything he’s ever up for," the singer says. "He’s one of my favorite people on the planet. And he’s so talented and he’s worked so hard for it."

 

In live settings, Sheeran’s uncanny charm brings whole arenas to silence, allowing him to perform his heartfelt acoustic songs without a backing band. Swift thinks that onstage persona could lend itself to the GRAMMY podium as well.

 

"I think he would have amazing acceptance speeches. We toured together all year and I watched him every single night. He was just such a show-stopper.”

 

Sheeran is prepping for the release of his highly-anticipated sophomore effort, due some time in 2014. He worked with the legendary Rick Rubin on the new music and says he hopes to release three albums over the next three years. 

 

"It was so amazing to watch him work and to watch him put together his new record, which is going to be great," Swift says. "Whether or not he wins Best New Artist, I think people are going to be so blown away by what comes next from him."

 

Speaking of new albums, Swift herself is due to release a new studio full length next year, rumored for the fourth quarter of 2014. “I’m really loving collaboration right now,” she told Billboard in December. “I see it as a bit of an apprenticeship. I want to be around people who love writing songs and have done it for years.”

 

Swift has already hinted that Max Martin is among those collaborators. 

 

In the meantime, Swift is set to perform at this year’s GRAMMYs and is nominated for four awards: Album of the Year and Best Country Album for “Red,” Best Country Duo/Group Performance for “Highway Don’t Care” (alongside Tim McGraw and Keith Urban), and Best Country Song for “Begin Again.” 

The machine behind Taylor Swift

Country music has sometimes ignored international markets. When Scott Borchetta signed up the 15-year-old Taylor Swift, however, he envisaged her winning fans thousands of miles beyond Nashville. “I was always fascinated by artists that could appeal globally,” he says. “So my goal with Taylor from the beginning was that she was going to be a global superstar.”

 

Almost a decade later, Mr Borchetta, president and chief executive of Big Machine Label Group, has very much achieved this ambition. Ms Swift, now 24, is now one of music’s biggest stars, having sold almost 30m albums of country-tinged pop, more than 6.5m of these outside the US. Her latest world tour, which involved nearly 70 North American performances, arrives in London for five arena shows next month, with a further night in Berlin. She is also nominated in four categories at next Sunday’s Grammy Awards.

 

“We started the label in 2005, and Taylor was my first signing, so that was a good day,” Mr Borchetta says, with some understatement.

 

The success of Ms Swift and other signings such as The Band Perry and Rascal Flatts has made the innovative Big Machine one of the most successful independent music groups in the US, at a time when the domestic market share of “indies” has risen to almost 35 per cent in spite of broader record company consolidation.

 

Mr Borchetta says: “We were able to attain momentum quickly, and to add great executives and great artists. We have three labels in the group, a publishing company and merchandising, and there’s a lot of other branding opportunities. But if we don’t have great music, nothing else matters.”

 

Born in Burbank, California, 51-year-old Mr Borchetta has the music business in his blood. He followed his father into record promotion, moving to Nashville and progressing to MCA Records, where he marketed such artists as Reba McEntire and Trisha Yearwood. Even when he moved to an executive role at another big label, DreamWorks, he continued a parallel passion for car racing, even becoming a Nascar truck champion. Off the track, Mr Borchetta has shown a similar boldness in the outspoken position he has taken on one of the most sensitive industry issues.

 

Most labels embrace, or at least accept, the now palpable swing away from track and album downloading towards streaming, via services such as Spotify and Deezer. Mr Borchetta, however, is wary that they might be cannibalising sales, and is not shy of acting accordingly. When Ms Swift’s most recent studio album Red was released in the autumn of 2012, it remained unavailable on streaming services for well over six months. The decision was described as “flat out stupid” on one technology website, and some of her fans, already immersed in streaming culture, were similarly upset.

 

The decision looked substantially less questionable when Red sold 1.21m copies in its first week in America alone, the biggest opening tally there for more than a decade. “I have real concerns with the biggest companies licensing their catalogues to any streaming service that switches on,” says Mr Borchetta. “I think that devalues music, and so it’s really important that record companies and content providers around the world make sure that we’re holding on to . . . value. It takes a lot of time and effort and money and talent to do this, and if we start giving it all away for fractions of pennies, we’re not going to be able to do it any more.”

 

Ms Swift’s pre-eminence in the market enabled her label to withhold those digital rights from the streaming services. Why rush to embrace Spotify when tracking company Nielsen SoundScan reports that digital sales of her tracks in the US now total 68m? Nevertheless, Big Machine’s decision to stream or not to stream is taken on a case-by-case basis. Its newer breakthroughs, such as the pop-leaning country duo Florida Georgia Line, have enjoyed massive US success in streams, as well as downloads and CD sales.

 

Mr Borchetta made another bold move in 2012, when he agreed a groundbreaking deal with the largest owner of radio stations in the US, Clear Channel. US radio stations have traditionally paid a royalty to songwriters and the music publishers that represent them for using their music, but performers received nothing, unless it was played online. Ms Swift writes all of her material, occasionally in partnership with other composers, so was earning the songwriter royalty but nothing as the recording artist.

 

The deal with Clear Channel means that Big Machine and its performers are now paid a proportion of the broadcaster’s advertising revenue when it plays their music through conventional radio too. Clear Channel’s concession on a point that has long been controversial for musicians was seen as a way of limiting the royalties incurred by its growing online business at the cost of paying more for its traditional broadcasting. Other label owners, including Warner Music, have since made similar pacts with Clear Channel to secure these performance royalties.

 

The trendsetting Big Machine, meanwhile, has persuaded other radio groups to follow Clear Channel’s example. “I believe most broadcasters know that performance royalties are part of the future, as more and more are or will be broadcasting digitally,” says Mr Borchetta. Some commentators have interpreted the more pop-flavoured recordings in Ms Swift’s output as an attempt to outgrow country music. Mr Borchetta denies the allegation, but makes no apologies for attempting to reach the widest possible audience with all of his artists.

 

“While her music has definitely become more worldly, she lives in Nashville and there’s always going to be a sense of that running through her music. I encourage her to make what she wants to make, so the next record could be anything from pure pop to bluegrass, who knows.”

 

Big Machine’s three labels enjoy the benefits of a distribution deal with Universal Music, whose chairman and chief executive Lucian Grainge praises Mr Borchetta effusively. “Scott is that rare executive who combines great creative instincts with the focus and discipline of a successful entrepreneur,” he says. But even as it straddles the divide between indies and majors, the company is the frequent subject of rumours that it will be sold. Mr Borchetta declares that this would only happen for “an outrageous sum which also absolutely guaranteed our independence operationally”. He adds: “I don’t see that offer coming in.”

 

Country roads lead overseas for Nashville signings

Scott Borchetta, Big Machine’s president and chief executive, says it became obvious to him in 2008 that cracking foreign markets would require a big commitment by the label and its star act, Taylor Swift. The realisation came when he visited London that year to strike an international distribution deal with Universal Music Group. Ms Swift has subsequently gone abroad at least three to four times a year.

 

That deal was overseen by Lucian Grainge, now chairman and CEO of UMG, and by Max Hole, now chairman and CEO of UMG’s international division. Mr Grainge says Mr Borchetta has “transformed Big Machine into a global music powerhouse”. As The Band Perry and Rascal Flatts prepare to return to Europe, Mr Borchetta is targeting an international audience for another Big Machine signing, a Southern rock band called the Cadillac Three.

 

“We have a mantra here that we’re right until proven wrong,” he says. “I want to give [international] listeners a chance to decide, and if they tell us, ‘You know what, we don’t like that,’ then OK, we’ve got it. I tell my artists all the time: ‘If you want to go just once, go on vacation. If you’re not going to come back, they’re going to forget about you.’”

 

It's no secret that Taylor Swift loves a good pair of classic kicks. The songstress recently debuted her fourth collection for Keds. It's filled with fun patterns in look-at-me hues, and we can't get enough—so we went straight to the source to learn all about her brand-new line.

 

"When I was a little kid, I had a pair of white Keds I wore everywhere," Taylor told us. "It was a nostalgic feeling when they asked me to be the inspiration for the collection. It's cool to be part of something with such a legacy." Her latest designs are inspired by her own wardrobe, which Taylor playfully describes as a combination of Easter egg colored and nautical-inspired pieces. "There's a lot of lace, polka dots, and stripes because those are the things I wear all the time!"

 

The other thing Taylor wears all the time? Her signature sneaks, of course. "I wore them on the Red tour during a part of the show where I had to crowd surf into a group of dancers, jump off the stage, and run all the way across the arena," she reveals. "They were perfect!" She's also been known to sport a pair to the gym or even to the beach. "For me, it's a comfort thing," she says.

 

Fortsätt att läsa...

 

Taylor Swift Leads Rebounding Concert Business

 

With Taylor Swiftleading the way, grossing more than $110 million for her North American tour, the concert business appears to have fully recovered from its summer struggles of three years ago. Overall ticket revenues have jumped from $1.7 billion in 2000 to $5.1 billion last year, according to Pollstar's newly released end-of-2013 data. The numbers are especially encouraging for fans, given average ticket prices went up just 1.1 percent, to $69.52. In part, prices were low because of tours like Swift, whose prices averaged $84.40, and second-place Bon Jovi, who grossed $107 million with $95 prices.

 

Fortsätt läsa

 

 Taylor Swift received birthday gifts during the holiday season, but she also gave quite a hefty one.

 

Nominated for four Grammys at the 56th annual awards -- which CBS televises Sunday, Jan. 26 -- the singing-songwriting superstar marked turning 24 last month by donating $100,000 to the Nashville Symphony. 

The musicians had taken a 15-percent salary cut in their contract negotiation last summer, and Swift elected to do her part, which earned her DoSomething.org's title of most charitable celebrity of 2013.

 

"They're an incredible group of people," she tells Zap2It. "I played with them a couple of years ago, and I had no idea they had gotten so wiped out by the floods in Nashville. There was so much damage to their building, they had to cut back on costs. They would never ask me to give anything, and that's why I felt compelled to do so."

 

Now with Grammy bids for the multiple-hit-yielding "Red" that include Album of the Year and Country Album -- both of which she won in 2010 (for "Fearless") -- Swift will take her current concert tour to Europe days after the award ceremony. She intends to give those fans the whole show, entailing some big shipping costs.

 

"I'm so excited for London and Berlin," she says, "and I'm really excited that we've taken the time to ship everything over. We'll have the full show, and that's why we've taken a break between going to Australia and going to London. I don't want anybody to get a stripped-down version of the show, just me standing on a stage."

 

Fortsätt att läsa...