At the age of nine she turned her attention to musical theatre and performed in Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions of "Grease", "Annie", "Bye Bye Birdie" and "The Sound of Music". Her mother put her in a saddle when she was nine months old and Swift later competed in horse shows. Her first hobby was English horse riding. Taylor spent her summers at her parents' vacation home at the Jersey shore. When she was nine years old the family moved to Wyomissing, PA, where she attended West Reading Elementary Center and Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School. Taylor spent most of her childhood on an 11-acre Christmas tree farm in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She was named after James Taylor, and her mother believed that if she had a gender neutral name it would help her forge a business career. Her ancestry includes German and English, as well as some Scottish, Irish, Welsh and 1/16th Italian. Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania, to Andrea (Finlay), a one-time marketing executive, and Scott Kingsley Swift, a financial adviser. As of this writing, she is also the top-selling digital artist in music history.
She also has been named the American Music Awards Artist of the Year, as well as the Entertainer of the Year for both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music, among many other accolades. In 2011 Swift was named Billboard's Woman of the Year. Taylor Alison Swift is a multi-Grammy award-winning American singer/songwriter who, in 2010 at the age of 20, became the youngest artist in history to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.