为了任务而来

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Swift's greatest musical influence is Shania Twain.[18] Her other influences include LeAnn Rimes, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, and Swift's grandmother. Although her grandmother was a professional opera singer,[19] Taylor's tastes always ran more toward country and she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton at an early age.[20] She also credits the Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain for demonstrating how much impact can be made by "stretching boundaries".[21] Swift also cites not fitting in at school as a big inspiration for songwriting.

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At age 11, Swift made her first trip to Nashville, hoping to obtain a record deal by distributing a demo tape of her singing with karaoke songs. She gave a copy to every label in town.[22] Swift was rejected by record labels and her peers.[23]

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After Swift returned to Pennsylvania, she was asked to sing at the U.S. Open tennis tournament; her rendition of the national anthem received a lot of attention.[24] Swift started writing songs and playing 12-string guitar when she was 12. Swift began to regularly visit Nashville and wrote songs with local songwriters. By the time she was 14, her family decided to move to an outlying Nashville suburb.[25]

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When Swift was 15, she rejected RCA Records because the company wanted to keep her on a development deal.[26] Swift then performed at Nashville's songwriters' venue, The Bluebird Café, catching the attention of Scott Borchetta[27] who signed her to his newly formed record label, Big Machine Records. At age 14, she also became the youngest staff songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house.[28].

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Swift released her debut single, "Tim McGraw", in mid-2006, reaching number 6 on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Songs chart.[29] Her self-titled debut album was later released on October 24, 2006.[30] Swift wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on the album, which debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200 and sold 39,000 copies during its first week.[31] It later peaked at number one at Billboard Top Country Albums and number five on the Billboard 200.[32] It also spent eight consecutive weeks at the top of the Top Country Albums charts[33] and remained at the top for 24 out of 91 weeks.[34] The only other country artists this decade to achieve the number-one sales position for 20 weeks or more are The Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwood.[35] As of November 2008, Taylor Swift has sold over three million copies and 7.5 million single downloads.[36]

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Swift has surpassed the 200 million mark for music streams on MySpace. She is currently ranked in the Top 10 for the most MySpace visits for all genres of music, and is MySpace's current top-ranking Country artist.[37][dead link] Swift is the most searched musical artist on MySpace in 2008.[38] The music video for "Tim McGraw" set a record by appearing for 30 consecutive weeks on GAC's fan-voted weekly Top 20 music countdown show, and reached number one on CMT's video charts. The video also won Swift an award for Breakthrough Video of the Year at the 2007 CMT Music Awards.[39] Her pursuit of country music stardom was the subject of "GAC Short Cuts", a part-documentary, part-music-video series airing since the summer of 2006 on the country music channel.[40] On May 15, 2007, Swift performed "Tim McGraw" at the Academy of Country Music Awards. She sang the song to Tim McGraw in the audience, and introduced herself for the first time to him. Swift has been an opening act for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill on their Soul2Soul 2007 tour. She has opened in the past for George Strait, Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts as well.[41]

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On August 21, 2007, Swift performed live on the season finale of America's Got Talent.[42] The second single from the Taylor Swift album, "Teardrops on My Guitar", was released February 24, 2007. The song originally made its peak positions in mid-2007, peaking at #2 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart and #33 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was re-released to the Hot 100 and Pop 100 in late 2007 with a pop remix that brought "Teardrops on My Guitar" to #13 on the Hot 100 and #11 on the Pop 100. In October 2007, Swift's songwriting peers at the Nashville Songwriters Association International honored her with their Songwriter/Artist of the Year Award, making her the youngest artist ever to win the award.[43]

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On November 7, 2007, Swift won the 2007 CMA Horizon Award and also performed "Our Song," the third single from her album, which would go on to become her first #1 song the week of December 22, 2007, where it leaped up from the #6 spot. This was the biggest jump to Number One since January 1998, when Tim McGraw's "Just to See You Smile", also jumped from #6 to #1.[44] "Our Song" spent six weeks at #1 on the Country charts and also peaked at #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #24 on the Billboard Pop 100. Swift also recorded a holiday album, Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection, which was released October 16, 2007, exclusively available at Target stores. The album, which was not as successful as her self-titled debut, featured both holiday classics such as "Last Christmas" and original songs written by Swift. Swift was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the category of Best New Artist, but lost to Amy Winehouse. Swift's successful single, "Picture to Burn" was the fourth single from her debut album. The song debuted early in 2008 and peaked at #3 on the Billboard Country Chart in the spring of 2008.

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Big Machine Records announced the release of "Should've Said No" on Monday, May 19. The song is the fifth and final single from Swift's debut album. She performed it on the 43rd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards.[45] The performance started off with her dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, but soon after a short black halter dress was revealed. In the last minute of the song, she went backstage to perform the final verse under a cascading waterfall. Swift had wanted to do that performance on stage with the water and the change of clothes since she was ten years old.[46]

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"Should've Said No" became her second Number One single for the chart dated August 23, 2008. In June 2008, at the CMA Music Festival held in Nashville, Swift signed autographs for nearly eight straight hours. It was the longest autograph-signing session since Garth Brooks' 23-hour marathon in 1996.[47] In Summer 2008, Swift released Beautiful Eyes, an EP sold exclusively at Wal-Mart.[48] In its first week of release, the album sold 45,000 copies, debuting at #1 on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart and #9 on the Billboard 200. With her self-titled debut album at #2 the same week, Swift became the first artist to hold the Top 2 positions of the Top Country Albums chart since LeAnn Rimes did so in 1997.[49] Swift plays a custom-made Taylor acoustic guitar made of koa wood.[50]