Here's What Taylor Swift's Parents Really Did For A Living
Taylor Swift is not only one of the most famous artists on the face of the earth; she's also one of the richest, with both Forbes and Bloomberg estimating her net worth to be approximately $1.1 billion. Yup, that's a billion with a capital B. And while she's no nepo baby who rode on her family's coattails, her parents, Scott and Andrea Swift, were apparently instrumental in helping her make it big within the fiercely competitive music industry.
From the get-go, Scott and Andrea primed Taylor for success, with the "Cruel Summer" singer telling Rolling Stone that they intentionally gave her a gender-neutral name on the assumption that it would help her progress in the professional world. "My mom thought it was cool that if you got a business card that said 'Taylor' you wouldn't know if it was a guy or a girl," she shared. "She wanted me to be a business person in a business world." And Taylor made it in business alright, except that her ambitions had always aligned with showbusiness. Scott and Andrea were ever-supportive, of course, moving their entire family to a city near Nashville so Taylor could be close to the heart of the music scene.
Fast forward to today, and Taylor is a bona fide superstar and a household name. It's all thanks partly to her parents' unwavering support and their expertise in marketing and finance, which have been crucial in helping Taylor attain the extraordinary success she enjoys now.
Andrea Swift's background in marketing helped Taylor make noise
Non-Swifties may not know that Taylor Swift wasn't discovered by some music executive. Nope — she and her mother, Andrea Swift, with brother Austin Swift in tow, hustled hard so she could get her foot in the door. "My mom waited in the car with my little brother [in Nashville] while I knocked on doors up and down Music Row," Taylor told Entertainment Weekly in 2008.
Andrea then leveraged her marketing background to help Taylor make a splash on the internet. Per People, she was formerly a marketing manager at an advertising agency, so she had the know-how to create buzz. Taylor's former manager, Rick Barker, dished that the singer already had a polished online presence way before she released a record. "The parents already had her MySpace and her website up and running," he recalled. "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."
There are also fans who speculated that Andrea was behind some of Taylor's career decisions early on, including the choice of "Tim McGraw" as her debut single. Per TikTok user @self_wife, it was likely Andrea's idea to name the song after a country music legend to draw attention to Taylor's brand. "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," she said. "It's a very smart strategy that came from her mom."
Taylor initially wanted to work in finance because of Scott
If Taylor Swift's love for music didn't trump everything else, you could probably expect her to run around Wall Street, just like her dad. Scott Swift was a stockbroker and founder of The Swift Group at Merrill Lynch. In a "YouTube Presents" interview, Taylor said that her father's dedication to his work in the finance sector was nothing short of inspiring.
"My dad is so passionate about what he does in the way that I'm passionate about music. This guy lives for being a stockbroker. That is his thing," Taylor said, noting that he had always encouraged her to save her money and invest in utilities. At one point, she even considered following in his footsteps, telling her friends that she wanted to be a financial advisor someday instead of typical kid aspirations like an astronaut or a ballerina. "I love my dad so much, because he's so gung-ho for his job, and I just saw how happy it made him, and I just thought, I can broke stocks," she quipped.
With Taylor now being a billionaire, she probably has her dad to thank for all those money lessons through the years. "[Dad is] just a big teddy bear who tells me everything I do is perfect." Taylor said of him, per E! News, but she added, "business-wise, he's brilliant."