Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian may have had their very public differences – but there’s one thing the two global superstars have in common: their momagers.
The pop superstar, 34, has openly credited her mother Andrea, 66, for playing a key part in her stratospheric rise to fame.
The mother-of-two, 66, who previously worked as a marketing executive, has previously been described by her daughter as ‘calculated, logical and business-minded’.
What’s more, one of Taylor’s first managers credited her parents Andrea and Scott for their ‘great marketing minds’ and propelling their daughter into becoming the internationally celebrated artist she is today.
Earlier this week, the singer made Grammys history when she became the first artist to win Album of the Year four times.
Later this year, the star is embarking on the international leg of her Eras Tour – which has grossed over $1bn so far.
During the early years of her career, Taylor credited her mother for her unwavering support.
She told Great American Country Network in 2008: ‘My mom and I have always been really close. She’s always been the friend that was always there. There were times when, in middle school and junior high, I didn’t have a lot of friends. But my mom was always my friend. Always.’
Here FEMAIL takes a look back at how Andrea helped mastermind Taylor’s career and established her as a country music heavyweight as a teen.
Marketing Taylor’s Music on MySpace
Taylor Swift bagged her first record deal with Big Machine Records when she was only 15.
However, it appears as though the Swift family had big plans for Taylor as early as 2001 – when she first recorded a demo CD, featuring covers of Hopelessly Devoted to You and Here You Come Again.
Before she signed with Big Machine Records, Taylor was already working with one of her earlier managers Rick Barber.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the star’s former manager praised Andrea for approaching her daughter’s career path with a clear marketing strategy.
He said: ‘The parents already had her MySpace and her website up and running.
‘The mom and dad both have great marketing minds. I don’t want to say fake it until you make it, but when you looked at her stuff, it was very professional even before she got her deal.’
Thanks to Andrea’s forward-thinking social media strategy, Rick then was able to gage Taylor’s fanbase’s reaction to her earlier music.
The former manager says he put use Taylor’s MySpace page to help them decide what the songs that eventually ended up on her debut album.
In an interview with Pollstar in 2014, Rick claimed Taylor told him ‘I want to be the biggest star in the world’ when they first started working together.
‘PR spin on how Taylor learned guitar’
In 2009, Taylor – who had released Fearless the year before – spoke in a promotional DVD about how she learned guitar from computer repairman Ronnie Cremer.
She said: ‘When I was about 12, this magical twist of fate (happened).
‘I was doing my homework [when the tech fixing my computer] looked over and saw the guitar in the corner.
‘And he said, “Do you play guitar?” I said, “Oh. No. I tried, but ….”
‘He said, “Do you want me to teach you a few chords?” and I said, “Uh, yeah. YES!”
However, the computer repairman told NY Daily News that this isn’t how how he remembered the interaction.
Detailing their meeting in 2002, he said that Taylor and Andrea came into his shop in Leesport, Pennsylvania, to ask if he could help them record a demo.
He explained: ‘After I did the demo, I was approached again by my brother, and by Andrea Swift.”Would I be interested in giving guitar lessons for Taylor? We’re trying to teach her how to play country music.”
‘I said, “I don’t know if I can teach country music. I don’t know the first thing about country music. I know rock music.”
The computer repairman speculated that Andrea and Taylor’s PR team slightly altered the story of how she learned guitar.
He added: ‘That doesn’t sell as good: A 36-year-old bald guy taught her. That ain’t gonna work.’
In 2015, Ronnie claims he was threatened with legal action by Taylor Swift’s team after he set up the website ITaughtTaylorSwift.com.
After sharing his version of the story, he told the Daily News in a follow-up: ‘I got a lot of hate mail from Swift fans […]
‘That her story, that she called a ‘magical twist of fate’ story, could ever not be the truth.’
‘Faked’ Southern accent?
Taylor Swift fans have long speculated that the singer’s Southern accent – which she spoke and sung with in the early days of her career – was ‘faked’.
The pop star spent the first 14 years of her life living in Pennsylvania before the Swift family relocated to Nashville, Tennessee so Taylor could pursue a music career.
In an interview with Time magazine in 2014, Taylor explained: ‘I decided to move to Nashville when I was about 10 years old.
‘I was obsessed with watching biography TV shows about Faith Hill and Shania Twain, and I noticed that both of them went to Nashville to start their careers.’
Around this time, Andrea and Scott drove their daughter to Nashville so she could hand out her demos at the major record labels – which resulted in her bagging a development deal when she was 13.
Although it’s possible Taylor picked up her accent as a result of the move, fans have suggested that it was something her parents and publicity team encouraged.
In a video that has amassed over 1.7m views on TikTok, documentary maker Ani Easton Baker alleged: ‘Taylor did a lot to market herself – like faked a Southern accent for the first few years of her career.
‘People forget that. She faked it. She’s not from the South!’
According to JSTOR’s linguist Chi Luu, the single ’22’ is one of the last times fans can hear Taylor’s Southern twang in her songs.
They wrote in 2020: ‘In the genre is pure pop, but the southern accent is still a force to be reckoned with.
‘The “e” of “twenty” sounds more like “twinny” and the “two” sounds more like “tew.” However, whether Swift code-switches because of the musical genre in which she’s singing, or because she may have only acquired her accent after moving to the South as a young teen.
‘She largely loses the more marked linguistic elements in transitioning into a pop artist, with an appropriately general American accent.’
Taylor has never directly addressed the speculation that her Southern accent was ‘faked’ or any rumours that Andrea and her team encouraged it.
In her music video for her 2017 single Look What You Made Me Do, the ‘Reputation’ album version of herself tells her former country star to stop acting ‘so nice’ before calling her ‘fake’.
Tim McGraw debut single
Elsewhere in her viral TikTok video, documentary maker Ani Easton Baker alleges that Andrea also came up with a ‘marketing strategy’ to aline her daughter with country singer Tim McGraw.
She says: ‘Taylor Swift’s very first single when she was called Tim McGraw.
‘And the reason it was called Tim McGraw was so that every single time Taylor Swift – brand new artist on the country scene – was written about, Tim McGraw’s name would be in the headline too.
‘Thus bringing over Tim McGraw’s fanbase and getting eyes on Taylor Swift.’
She alleges: ‘It’s a very smart strategy that came from her mom because her mom was a marketing executive.’
However, this theory has never been confirmed by a member of Taylor Swift’s team or her mother.
The only mention Taylor has ever made about her mother and her debut single is how they packaged copies of Tim McGraw together to send to local radio stations.
Andrea accessible to fans
In the video, which amassed over 170k ‘likes’, Andrea recognises him and his mother and agrees to hand Taylor his letter.
One fan gushed: ‘You can really see why Taylor is the person she is when you see how nice her mom is. She raised Tay well.’
Another added: ‘Taylor got it from her mama, the kindest human beings!’
Meanwhile, a third gushed: ‘It’s not hard to understand why Taylor is the way she with a mother like that. Angels. And so down to Earth.’
While accepting the award for Album of the Year on Sunday, Taylor said: ‘I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I have been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19th.’
‘It’s called The Tortured Poet’s Department. I’m going to go and post the cover right now backstage.’
Keeping true to her word minutes later Taylor – who also earned her fourth Album Of The Year at the show – shared the racy cover for her upcoming 11th studio album, which saw her laying on a bed in black underwear and a sheer black top, and caused her Instagram page to temporarily go down.
Swift started out her speech by sharing that it was her 13th award – a number she considers lucky.
‘Okay, this is my 13th grammy. Which is my lucky number. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that.’
‘I want to say thank you to the members of the recording academy for voting this way, but I know that the way that the recording academy voted is a direct reflection of the passion of the fans.’
Minutes after she left the stage, the artwork for the new album was shared to her Instagram, with the caption: ‘All’s fair in love and poetry… New album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Out April 19 [white heart emoji].’
She also posted a photo of a handwritten note that read: ‘And so I enter into evidence / My tarnished coat of arms / My muses, acquired like bruises / My talismans and charms / The tick, tick, tick of love bombs / My veins of pitch black ink / All’s fair in love and poetry…’
She signed off the text with: ‘Sincerely, The Chairman of the Tortured Poets Department.’
The album announcement received over 7 million likes in just an hour.
