Why Taylor Swift could become the world’s biggest pop icon
She’s on the cusp of being the world’s biggest pop star. But Taylor Swift hasn’t come through the years completely unscathed.
Music
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It’s somewhat ironic that during a week where Kanye West’s career officially self-destructed after a slew of ugly, antisemitic tirades that Taylor Swift would firmly cement her place as the biggest pop star on the planet.
Swift and West – who also goes by Ye – have engaged in an on-again-off-again feud for more than a decade, ever since he interrupted her at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards as she accepted an award, but as his career tanks, Swift’s continues to boom.
Indeed, the release last week of Midnights, Swift’s 10th studio album, has fully enshrined her as everyone’s favourite pop star. Again.
Staggeringly, Midnights sold more than one million copies in the US just three days after its release.
To put those figures in perspective, last year, Adele’s 30 took a week to sell more than 600,000 in the US, Beyonce’s Renaissance shifted just over 300,000 copies in seven days, and Harry Styles’ Harry’s House landed at just a tick over 500k a week in.
Midnights was also the first album to sell one million albums in that time frame in five years. The last album to achieve that feat? Swift’s 2017 album, Reputation.
In just 24 hours, Midnights also became the top selling album of 2022 in the US. The album also broke Spotify’s record for the most streams in a day while the top 10 songs last Monday on Spotify and Apple Music in the US were all from Midnights. It’s also been critically acclaimed with Rolling Stone describing the album as “an instant classic” in its five-star review.
Not even the need to remove a controversial scene in Swift’s Anti-Hero music video after it was criticised for being “fatphobic” could stop her album from rocketing up the charts.
“I’m feeling very overwhelmed by the fans’ love for the record,” Swift told Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show in the US earlier this week.
“The fact that the fans have done this, the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it, is everything.”
So, what is it about the 32-year-old – originally from Pennsylvania via Nashville, where she moved at the age of 12 to follow her musical dreams – that has so connected her to audiences everywhere from Austin to Australia?
Well, aside from her innate ability to write instantly catchy pop songs, Swift bonds with her fans in a way that superstars such as Beyonce – who appears completely inscrutable to the public – and even the once down to earth Adele, now living in a gated LA mega mansion who rarely tours, can’t or won’t.
Swift speaks directly to her fans via social media in a way that feels intimate and real, posting regular videos on TikTok where she lets them in on her inner life.
Whether that be posting snippets of songs prerelease or sitting in her bathroom rambling, she makes fans feel part of the whole process.
She’s also been known to regularly turn up at the homes of fans she knows are going through a tough time, bearing gifts and hugs.
She may look like a six-foot supermodel but she’s just as goofy as the rest of us. And the love goes both ways as Swift told Fallon: “My fans tease me a lot and I enjoy it.”
She doesn’t keep her audience waiting years for new music, either. Throughout the pandemic, she has been prolific, releasing two new albums – the dreamy, indie-pop magnificence of both Folklore and Evermore – and re-recording some of her back catalogue – 2008’s Fearless and 2012’s Red – after a stoush with her old record label, Big Machine, over ownership and rights to her music. The move was a stroke of genius as fans leapt to buy the new versions, giving Swift back total musical control.
Then there are the tunes. Her songs of loneliness, insecurity and heartbreak – themes she returns to again and again – have spoken to girls and young women since her 2006 debut album, the self-titled Taylor Swift, and the teenage heartbreak of its debut single, Tim McGraw.
These days, Swift describes herself as a “geriatric pop star”, telling Fallon that Midnights was her “first directly autobiographical album in a while”, adding that she focused on “shame, I love to write about that one … self-loathing, I could go on”.
Swift hasn’t come through the years completely unscathed, however. There has been criticism at times that she hasn’t been political enough, that she was too concerned with straddling both sides of the political fence. In recent years, however, she has become more outspoken and confident in her own voice, blasting former US President Donald Trump in 2020 for “stoking the fears of white supremacy and racism” after he criticised Black Lives Matter protests while in June she reacted to the Supreme Court overturning abortion rights by saying she was “absolutely terrified” by the court’s decision.
Her romantic relationships – remember the Jake Gyllenhaal, Harry Styles and Tom Hiddleston years? – have invited much scrutiny and scorn. As if Swift’s affairs of the heart were part of some sort of publicity stunt entered into purely to get her song material and publicity instead of what they were – a then-20-something doing what all 20-somethings do. In what universe would a male artist cop remotely similar criticism? He wouldn’t.
(These days, her private life is infinitely less public – she’s been quietly living in London with British actor boyfriend Joe Alwyn for the past few years.)
There have been other high-profile spats. Katy Perry accused Swift of “stealing” her dancers for a tour, Nicki Minaj traded Twitter barbs with Swift over – yes – MTV VMA nominations, and there was a reported falling out with former BFF, model Karlie Kloss. But the one that went nuclear and lasted more than a decade was Swift’s full-blown, feud with West and later, his now ex-wife, Kim Kardashian.
As stated, the West/Swift brouhaha kicked off in 2009 when the bombastic – and allegedly drunk – rapper stormed on stage as Swift was receiving an MTV Video Music Award (VMAs) for her hit, You Belong with Me, which later prompted then-US President Barack Obama to label him “a jacka**”).
Swift’s crime? She won over Beyonce.
West took the microphone from her, and said: “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!”
Swift, who was only 19 at the time, looked suitably shocked and embarrassed.
(Years later she told this journalist, the moment made her feel like she “didn’t deserve to be there”.)
After a period of truce – she even presented West with yes, a VMA in 2016 – it started up again after West released the 2016 track, Famous, where he suggested he had “made that b***h famous” because of the VMAs kerfuffle, and then added: “I feel like me and Taylor could still have sex.”
West said she’d signed off on the lyrics, Swift countered that she absolutely hadn’t.
Swift’s brother Austin filmed a video of himself throwing a pair of West’s Yeezy Adidas sneakers away in protest. (This past week Adidas cut ties with West – and his Yeezy line – for good.)
“Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single Famous on her Twitter account,” a rep for Swift said at the time. “She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message. Taylor was never made aware of the actual lyric, ‘I made that b***h famous.’”
In 2020, when a phone call between West and Swift was leaked, where Swift said she would “have to think about” letting the rapper use the lines in the song, Kardashian weighed in, accusing Swift of having “manipulated the truth”, before going on to say she felt “left without a choice but to respond because she is actually lying”.
But Swift has had the last laugh, with her star power brighter than ever. She even hinted this week that, after a four-year absence, she might soon get back on the road.
“I miss looking into the faces of the fans,” she said.
We all can’t wait to see hers.
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Originally published as Why Taylor Swift could become the world’s biggest pop icon
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