Taylor Swift has proven to know the secret formula to make everything she touches turn platinum—but there are plenty of Taylor Swift fun facts you may not know, even if you are a die-hard fan. Did you know that at 20-years-old she was the youngest artist ever to win a Grammy for the Album of the Year category in 2010 for her album Fearless?
Though her personal life is constantly dissected by the media, there are some Taylor Swift fun facts that are a lot more entertaining than who she is dating. Read below to find out more cool tidbits about the hit maker that might just be the secret to her success.
1. Taylor’s talent is in her genes.
Taylor Swift’s grandmother on her mom’s side, Majorie Finlay, was an accomplished opera singer. The maternal grandmother was an internationally known entertainer and even hosted a television show in Puerto Rico. Looks like the talent apple didn’t fall too far from the tree in this family.
2. Taylor Swift was the first ‘Saturday Night Live’ host to ever write their own monologue.
Leave it to Swift to not only make her “Saturday Night Live” episode a hit but to also make history while doing so. SNL writers pen all of the celebrity host’s monologues, all but Taylor Swift’s. She came up with her own monologue titling it “My Monologue Song,” an ode that had sly jokes about Joe Jonas and Kanye West, and dedicated a line to Taylor Lautner, her boyfriend at the time we have to admit, it is all pretty funny.
3. For her first job, she was an exterminator of sorts.
Since Taylor Swift lived on a Christmas tree farm, when the Holiday season arrived the whole family participated in the business. Her job was to check all the trees for bugs, praying mantises to be exact. But it was clear she was not born to take over the family business when she forgot to check a tree and a family was left with a bug infestation in their home. Oops!
4. Poppa Swift is also a smart business man.
Taylor Swift’s dad Scott owns 3% of her record label Big Machine Records. Scott was extremely sure of his daughter’s talent so he became an early investor. While her grandmother passed down her love of singing, Swift got her business savvy from her father. Her parents named her after singer-songwriter James Taylor and hoped that by giving her an androgynous name she’d have a better chance at succeeding in the business world. Taylor told Rolling Stone that her parents gave her the name because if you saw her name on a business card you wouldn’t know if it was a boy or girl. Clever!
5. Naturally, she is also a novelist.
Not only has she written over 200 songs in her lifetime but at just 12-years-old, Taylor Swift spent an entire summer writing a 350-page novel. Though she hasn’t expressed her desire to publish it, (we are sure it would become a New York Time’s best seller in no time) she has said that she would like to write her own biography somewhere down the line. Two years after writing the novel, she was the youngest songwriter to be hired in Sony/ATV music publishing history. In addition to that, she is an award-winning poet. In the fourth grade, she penned a poem called ‘Monster in My Closet’ that won a national poetry contest.
6. Taylor’s brother, Austin, is enrolled at the University of Notre Dame and is a photographer.
Austin recently transferred to Notre Dame and freelances for Getty Images in his free time. Taylor Swift recently missed the EMA’s and took a surprise trip to the university to see her brother’s performance in a school play and the students went into a frenzy.
7. She faces insecurities like the rest of us do.
Taylor has framed a photograph of the Kanye West incident at the 2009 Video Music Awards at her home in Nashville with a caption that reads “Life is full of little interruptions.” She has also stopped Googling herself after a vocal performance at the 2010 Grammys she is not proud of.