Taylor Swift wasn’t raised in the bustling country music scene of Nashville, but she was determined to make her dreams a reality. Andrea and Scott Swift raised their daughter alongside her brother, Austin, on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, in a small town where residents tend to stay their whole lives. “Nobody really expects you to leave, especially before you graduate. That doesn’t happen,” the singer told Entertainment Weekly in 2008.
It couldn’t have been easy for Andrea and Scott to pack up the lives they had known for decades, but by the time their daughter was in middle school, she was writing songs and had her sights completely set on Tennessee. When the “Mine” singer was just 14 years old, the family packed up and moved to Hendersonville, a city near downtown Nashville. At the time, Scott transferred his stockbroker career to a new office.
Despite the big move, Taylor’s parents made sure their daughter never felt she was shouldering the weight of the decision. “I never wanted to make that move about her ‘making it,'” Andrea explained to the outlet. “Because what a horrible thing if it hadn’t happened, for her to carry that kind of guilt or pressure around.” After performing gigs at the famous Bluebird Cafe, she eventually caught the eye of music guru Scott Borchetta. He eventually signed Taylor to Big Machine Label Group in 2005 and helped launch her career.
