With a prolific musical output, a remarkably bankable tour and a name that is headline catnip, it is no surprise that Time magazine has declared 2023 the year of Taylor Swift.
In its annual issue honoring a Person of the Year — a nearly century-old designation whose recipients include Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Martin Luther King Jr and climate activist Greta Thunberg — the magazine called music’s reigning deity a “rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.”
Nearly two decades into her career the 33-year-old’s star simply keeps rising: Swift is smashing industry records, and her conversation-commanding “Eras” tour is set to bring in an estimated US$2 billion in revenue — and become the first tour to cross the symbolic US$1-billion mark.
Photo: Time, via AFP
With hundreds of millions of social media followers and a staunchly loyal fan base, she can move any dial with the tiniest of efforts.
“Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light,” Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote in a statement. “Much of what Swift accomplished in 2023 exists beyond measurement.”
“She mapped her journey and shared the results with the world: she committed to validating the dreams, feelings and experiences of people, especially women, who felt overlooked and regularly underestimated,” he wrote.
By some estimates her sprawling empire is worth more than US$1 billion, and the massive US$92.8 million opening this fall of her tour-documenting film is but another jewel on the artist’s crown.
Advance ticket sales for the movie topped US$100 million worldwide, theater operator AMC said, making it the best-selling feature-length concert film in history.
Swift’s blossoming romance with Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelce has also brought the US National Football League a whole new wave of fans, as her hundreds of millions of social media followers track the couple’s every move.
It is not new for Swift, who since her teenage years has seen her dating life broadcast to the world.
“There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once,” she said of the current frenzy around her game-day appearances.
“I’m just there to support Travis,” she said. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads and Chads.”
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