Introduction
“If you're interested in music conversation then she's in the middle of that. If you're interested in creative writing conversations, she’s in the middle of that. If you're interested in a business conversation she's in the middle of that. If you're interested in a celebrity gossip conversation she's in the middle of that. And now because of her new boyfriend she's also in the middle of sports conversations as well. She’s added half a billion dollars to the NFL. She's boosted ratings to the biggest ratings by a million miles on American television which is the NFL. We should get her on the show.”
Not my words, but those of Richard Osman and Marina Hyde on their podcast, The Rest Is Entertainment. Who could they be talking about? Let’s find out by taking a medium-sized dive.
The Medium-Sized Dive
Taylor Alison Swift - did you guess correctly? - began professional songwriting, aged 14. She achieved prominence as a country pop singer, before going on to dabble in many different genres, including rock, electronica, pop, hip-hop and indie.
Swift is the highest-grossing female touring act, and the first billionaire with music as the main source of income. She has now won 14 Grammy awards and not only is she one of the greatest songwriters and artists of all time according to music industry polls, she is one of Forbes’ 100 most powerful women in the world. She is also the current Time Person of the Year, one of only 5 women to have been selected for the award, not only the first musician, but also the first entertainer of either gender to be chosen going back to the award’s inception in 1927.
Her 131-date “Eras” world tour is on track to be the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, at $1.4 billion. Analysts estimate the tour will also have a total economic impact from tour-related spending of $5 billion on host cities. Even the Federal Reserve has noted the effect her tour is having on regional economies. This is new territory. We have never seen anyone before actually change the economy wherever they go.
How, you may well ask, has all this happened? Let’s stay calm, if we can, and try to break this down a bit.
Some things that Taylor Swift is good at that most other highly successful artists are also good at.
The things you’d expect the modern pop star to do, she does very well.
She writes or co-writes almost all of her songs and the lyrics often tell personal and relatable stories about love, heartbreak, and personal growth, resonating deeply with her fans. She has mastered the use of social media to engage with her Swifties creating a sense of community. She has used her platform to speak out on political issues, resonating with a broader audience beyond her music, but steers clear of any overly controversial topics. Her live performances and tours are known for their high production value, creativity, and personal touches, which enhance her connection with fans. She has taken control of her music catalogue, re-recording her earlier albums to regain ownership of her masters.
Amongst her peers, she has been vocal about artists' rights, including her public battles over music ownership and streaming royalties. Her activism has not only raised her profile but also garnered respect within the industry. So, she doesn’t get much, if any, friendly fire.
She gives to food banks, to city schools, to children with brain cancer, to animal foundations, to a mother of five whose husband died of Covid. She sends donations to those who had revealed online that they were struggling during the lockdowns, and she helped out an aspiring maths student in 2020 with a donation to help him study at the University of Warwick.
The cynic might say such generosity is easy if you’re a billionaire and it’s good for business. As she would say, haters gonna hate. But she also has a reputation for being courteous with thank-you notes, thoughtful and considerate in an industry where any whiff of diva behaviour gets called out. All this behaviour has created the ideal role model that parents can sign off on. And are happy to chaperone their children to her concerts.
Maybe you wouldn’t want to be one of her ex-boyfriends though.
Now then, the above conditions are necessary, but not sufficient. There are in addition some highly significant differentiators which have driven the Swift phenomenon.
So, what has turned her into a phenomenon?
#1 - Excellence in songwriting - that is just the right amount of accessible
We have to start with her songwriting. We are never ever getting back together to take just one example starts with the title which is strong, funny, unexpected and memorable. She is both prolific and highly talented as a songwriter, one of the very best, and this underpins everything else. Here’s the poet Stephanie Burt:
She has a lot of different gifts as a songwriter … with a lot of melodic gifts, and in a way that does not make her seem highbrow or alienate potential audience members. I would not be surprised to discover that her body of songwriting altogether had a larger number of words than any body of comparable hit songs by a comparable songwriter, except for someone like Bob Dylan.
She then adds …
One of the things that’s really remarkable for me about her is that harmonically, she’s not usually that interesting. It’s pretty normal pop chord progressions and pretty standard varieties of pop arrangement. Her great genius and her innovations and her brilliance as a songwriter is melodic and verbal. And, of course, she’s also very good at singing, which is not to be sneezed at. But she’s able to do that within the fairly tight constraints of existing, easily recognizable chord progressions and rhythmic setups.
So, she doesn’t challenge your conception of what a great song is. They’re just really great songs within the parameters with which you are familiar. It’s different, but the same, which is exactly what everyone in entertainment strives for.
#2 - She has phenomenal reach and phenomenal depth (if you want that)
The Beatles started losing people when they grew their hair long and started taking drugs. Word got out that Michael Jackson was actually deeply odd. Prince changed his name to a squiggle. Madonna took all her clothes off and made a book out of the photographs. Beyonce is well known for being about black female empowerment. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s just not for everyone.
Taylor Swift will never start taking drugs, get a pet monkey, become a squiggle, take all her clothes off or go on stage surrounded by Black Panthers.
Some people don’t rate Taylor Swift, but not many people don’t “get’ her. She’s transparently easy to get. She alienates nobody. Well, not exactly true, but typically, the people who don’t like her, just haven’t heard her. She both sits at the intersection of vast numbers of people’s tastes, but also at the centre of her fans’ universes. She offers the promise of shared exclusivity for her vast army of Swifties. But there’s no moat around that fanbase. The vast army of casual listeners are included too. Like any global brand, she completely understands that the game is to appeal to as many people as possible all the time.
#3 - You can have a parasocial relationship with her
We live in a hyper-mediated world, which you may know already. The illusion Swift has created is that she’s a normal girl who anyone can relate to. In a way, that’s true. Although you can’t have a personal relationship with her, the things she talks about and her friendly mid-west of saying them can create the impression that you really know her – despite the fact that she is in fact in a universe of one. She’s an archetype or an avatar who stands for the person you’re like and the person you want to be when you’re a teenage girl in particular. And while she accrues new prepubertal superfans all the time, she also has forty-year old mothers who have been on the same journey as her. Well, the same journey from girlhood to adulthood, at least. And there is no other global superstar of whom that can be said.
#4 - She changes but she remains herself
Some artists are musical chameleons, constantly reinventing themselves. Kylie started out as the girl next door on Neighbours and ended up as Sex Goddess Kylie. David Bowie pivoted from mime artist to Ziggy Stardust, then on to Philadelphia disco via Alienated Alien through to his Thin White Duke phase. John Lennon by 1968 was unrecognisable from just 4 years previously. Beyonce seems as if she’s occupying different personae.
Taylor Swift changes musical genres, but is not in fact a chameleon. Her great strength is she always remains recognisably herself, regardless of what genre she is flirting with. Honest, dependable, mid-west girl. However consciously strategic it might be, she widens her audience demographic with each change of style, while hardly seeming to lose her old fan base, which is happy to accompany her on the journey. Even the dad that takes his teenage daughter to a Swift concert doesn’t mind attending because she’s done a collaboration with The National, classic sad dad music, of which he approves.
A sizable section of her original country music franchise has stuck with her, largely because of the strength in her songwriting, but also because they trust her to stay relatable.
#5 - She can cope and carries on coping
One area where Swift is matched perhaps only by Michael Jackson is in starting her career at a very young age, releasing her debut album at 16. Most artists burst on to the scene and swiftly fade from view; some steadily improve over a few years before imploding; a few peak and then enjoy a long half-life living off the early stuff. Some make comebacks, a few others come and go in waves.
The interesting thing about Swift is that she has sustained her upwards trajectory for nearly twenty years. It’s really hard to think of anyone else who’s pulled that off. I think a lot of that can be put down to her phenomenal work ethic. There’s a telling quote from an interview with the New Yorker:
“I sometimes stress myself out wondering what my trajectory is — like, if I sleep in and wake up at 2 p.m., because I’m so tired from the night before, sometimes I’ll beat myself up, because what if I was supposed to wake up earlier that day and write a song?”
In one of the documentaries about her, she can be seen receiving a message from her agent informing her she’s missed out on an award. She’s clearly upset, but merely replies “It’s OK. I’ll just have to get better.” That’s does separate her from your classic entitled superstar. She never takes anything for granted.
Can you imagine getting up and thinking today I’ve got to singlehandedly play to a hundred thousand people and prop up an entire economy? Perhaps only in your nightmares. But for Taylor Swift, it’s just what she does and, for now at least, she has yet to be crushed by the relentless demands of the fame machine.