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Taylor Swift · S1 E1
Reading, Pennsylvania
The house on High Street, the Christmas tree farm, and the family that made her.
A nine-year-old stands in the living room of a stone house on Grandview Boulevard, rewinding the same VHS musical for the third time today. Outside, the Christmas tree farm stretches across eleven acres of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and she already knows she is leaving.
"Christmas Tree Farm" -- Taylor Swift (2019). The video is built entirely from real childhood footage: birthday mornings in Wyomissing, backyard snow days, the tree farm in Montgomery County. This is the world before anyone outside Pennsylvania knew her name.
Christmas Tree Farm
Taylor releases "Christmas Tree Farm" in December 2019 as a holiday single, built on actual home video footage from her childhood. The production is warm and polished, a pop-country holiday song dressed in sleigh bells and nostalgia. But the footage underneath tells a different story: a girl growing up on a real working tree farm in rural Pennsylvania, surrounded by family routines that will vanish within a few years. She films nothing new for the video. Everything is already on tape.
Wyomissing, Pennsylvania
Taylor Alison Swift is born on December 13, 1989, at Reading Hospital in West Reading, Pennsylvania. She grows up in Wyomissing, a quiet, well-off borough just outside the city. Her father Scott is a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch. Her mother Andrea, a former marketing executive, steps away from her career to raise Taylor and her younger brother Austin. The family owns a Christmas tree farm in nearby Montgomery County.
“I had the most magical childhood, running free and going anywhere I wanted to in my head.”
— Taylor Swift
TAP TO REVEAL: Why is Taylor Swift named "Taylor"?
Bonus Listening
"The Outside" (Taylor Swift, 2006). Written entirely by herself at twelve, about being ignored and excluded at middle school. One of only three solo-written tracks on her debut album.
The Outside, Taylor Swift (2006)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Taylor wrote this about being shunned by classmates at middle school, the feeling of pressing your face against a window into a world that won't let you in.
Taylor Swift's mother Andrea chose the name "Taylor" for a specific reason. What was it?
Andrea Swift has already started making calls to Nashville. She drives Taylor to New York City for vocal lessons, three hours each way, and never once asks her daughter to reconsider. Next: the woman who gave up her career so her daughter could have one.
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