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.
In the Groove With Verve Records’ Jamie Krents as Label Racks Up Grammys for Samara Joy, Madison Cunningham
variety.comShirley Halperin Executive Editor, Music Universal Music Group is home to dozens of labels spanning every genre, from pop to hip-hop, rock to R&B, country to Latin and niche styles like Christian, classical and Jazz.
To run one of these companies is to associate with top talent — household names like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Drake and Lady Gaga — and the pressure to perform is equally massive.
Which makes a label like Verve, which launched in the 1950s with the music of Ella Fitzgerald — and whose current roster includes left-of-center signings like Tank and the Bangas, Kurt Vile and Arooj Aftab — a sort of refuge in the giant commercial enterprise that is the world’s biggest music company.
But Verve’s value to UMG is significant, and this is not lost on Sir Lucian Grainge, its chairman and CEO, who has given the label the leeway to invest in traditional artist development.
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