Taylor Swift Billboard’s Woman of the Year

Becomes first artiste to have won the honorary award more than once

LOS ANGELES: Pop singer Taylor Swift has been named Billboard’s Woman of the Year, becoming the first artiste to win the honour more than once, the music industry trade magazine said on Friday.

Swift, 24, who shot to fame in 2006 as a teenage country sensation and has been able to successfully cross over into pop music, will release her fifth album 1989 on October 27. Last month, the seven-time Grammy winner scored a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 song chart with Shake It Off, her most pop-oriented song to date.

Swift has built a strong following among teens and young adults with a mix of emotional love songs and empowering breakup songs such as We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and I Knew You Were Trouble. “As one of the most influential artistes of her generation, Taylor Swift has seen incredible success on the Billboard charts,” Janice Min, the co-president of the magazine’s owner, Guggenheim Media, said in a statement.

Each of Swift’s studio albums has sold more than four million copies in the United States to date and her last four albums have topped both the US album chart and US country album chart. Swift is the best-selling digital music artiste of all time, according to the magazine.

Swift who had won the award in 2011 will once again be honoured as Billboard’s Woman of the Year in December, at Billboard’s annual Women in Music event in New York. 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2014.

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