Taylor has taken the country world by storm, in a career that could have been made into movie magic itself, the Cinderella story of a girl who was discovered while singing Karaoke in a small-town restaurant.
This isn't exactly my definition of getting discovered, but I think it's close enough. The definition I have given involves a karaoke bar. If Taylor Swift was truly discovered by singing karaoke in a restaurant, I am willing to say that I have finally found a singer who made it big through karaoke.
I had a look at the Taylor Swift official website to verify this. There is a "My Life" page, but Swift does not go into how she got discovered. Next stop, Wikipedia:
At age 11, Swift made her first trip to Nashville, hoping to obtain a record deal by distributing a demo tape of her singing with karaoke songs. She gave a copy to every label in town, but was rejected. After Swift returned to Pennsylvania, she was asked to sing at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, where her rendition of the national anthem received much attention.
From this, it would appear that Swift didn't make it big with the karaoke tapes, and that she didn't make it big until she found her way to the US Open. Lemme state this: peddling karaoke tapes to record companies does not qualify for my definition of getting discovered through karaoke. (Mary J. Blige was another artist discovered after peddling karaoke demos.)
A report from CBS News from May of 2008 had this to say about the discovery of Swift:
The 18-year-old Pennsylvania native, who grew up on a Christmas tree farm, started singing at the age of 10 at karoke contests, fairs and festivals in her hometown of Reading. With the support of her family, she headed to Nashville at age 11 to pursue her dream. By age 12, she was already writing songs with local songwriters in Nashville. Back in Pennsylvania, she landed an important gig singing the National Anthem at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, which got a lot of buzz.
This article says that Swift did the karaoke contest thing before she did the karaoke tape peddling thing. From this article, it would appear that she didn't get discovered until her post-karaoke contest days. (BTW I don't consider karaoke contests to fit my definition, either.)
The original article mentioned that Taylor was singing in a restaurant. Where did the restaurant thing come in?
I quote again from the CBS article:
After performing at Nashville's premier songwriters' café, The Bluebird Café, she was noticed by Scott Borchetta, who signed her onto Big Machine Records.
Cafe? Oh! Maybe that's the restaurant? The Wikipedia article on the Bluebird Cafe says that it is a nightclub, and it does not contain the word karaoke.
Based on this research, I am going to say that this rumor is false. I still have not found any credible evidence of a singer who made it big by being discovered singing in a karaoke bar.
