Today's birthday, December 13: US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift (1989 - ).

Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift first found success in the US country music scene in 2006 and has gone on to become one of the top-selling artists in music history.

Swift was born in 1989 in Pennsylvania and spent most of her childhood on an 11-acre Christmas tree farm in Montgomery County.

At the age of nine, she became interested in musical theatre and after performing in stage productions, moved to Nashville at the age of 14 to pursue a career in country music.

After a successful performance at The Bluebird Cafe, she scored a contract with Big Machine Records.

Swift's self-titled debut album was released in 2006 and went on to sell more than five million copies. The album's third single, Our Song, made her the youngest person to write and perform a number-one song on the Hot Country Songs chart.

Her second album, Fearless, was released in 2008. It became the best-selling album of 2009 in the US largely due to the success of the pop crossover singles Love Story and You Belong with Me. The album won four Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the youngest Album of the Year winner.

Since Fearless, the singer has released another four successful studio albums including Red in 2012 which yielded the hit single We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, and her pop-focused album 1989 in 2014. The latter produced multiple number one hit singles in Australia, the US and Canada, including Shake it Off, Blank Space, and Bad Blood.

1989 received three Grammy Awards and the 2015 concert tour for the album became one of the highest-grossing of the decade.

In August 2017 Swift testified in a trial against David Mueller, a former radio DJ she accused of groping her in 2013. The court ruled in her favour, awarding her $1 in damages as a symbolic gesture.

Her most recent album, Reputation, was released in November this year and surpassed $1 million in sales in its first week. The album's lead single Look What You Made Me Do topped the UK and US charts.

Swift has also been renowned for her string of celebrity relationships, hooking up with Joe Jonas, John Mayer, Harry Styles and Tom Hiddleston among others.