Scott Barbour/TAS/Getty Images for TASTaylor Swift is a much-loved lady in Tennessee, y'all!
In fact, on Dec. 28, The Tennessean named the 24-year-old country-pop singer as 2013's Tennessean of the Year.
Swift wasn't born a Southern belle (her family moved to Middle Tennessee when she was 14 to pursue her music career), but as the Nashville paper notes, she has "become a worldwide ambassador for Tennessee's capital city, an example to millions of young (and not-so-young) people of how to turn damaged feelings into healing creativity, and a financial booster to some of the city's most important institutions."
In October 2013, thanks to Swift's $4 million gift, the Taylor Swift Education Center opened at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Museum. Per The Tennesseean, the center includes three classrooms, a learning lab and in 2014, will include an interactive exhibit gallery, giving the museum seven times more space for education.
Swift also donated $100,00 to the Nashville symphony on her 24th birthday, Dec. 13, and has for the second year in a row been named DoSomething.org's most charitable celebrity.
"For her to believe in us, the hometown institutions, and to be focused on Nashville speaks volumes," said Kyle Young, the director and chief executive officer of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. "How often do you think she's approached to do things, all over the world? So it means so much for her to believe in us and think that investments here would help the city she clearly cares so much about."
Per The Tennessean, Swift has said she "would not be the same kind of person without Nashville" and that the music city has "shaped me into who I am."
"I think everybody feels that. We don't have an ocean, or mountains: People come here because of the feeling they get," she said. "It pulls you in and turns you into who you're going to be."
Clearly Swift and Nashville have a great relationship with one another.