Taylor Swift beats Barbie as Person of the Year
Pop megastar Taylor Swift has been named TIME’s Person of the Year and, in her first in-depth interview in years, opened up about her Kim Kardashian and Kanye West feud.
The Beatles may have been bigger than Jesus, but the current era’s biggest pop star Taylor Swift is bigger than the King here on Earth.
Swift’s mega hit The Eras Tour saw her beat King Charles III, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and cultural phenomenon Barbie to be recognised as TIME’s Person of the Year.
Swift – following in the footsteps of other luminaries including Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Donald Trump – said she was the proudest and happiest she’s ever been smashing industry records, which saw her become the first entertainer named in the annual TIME cover story.
Fans of Aussie actor Margot Robbie were hoping her film Barbie won for what TIME called a $1.4 billion “explosion of pink” showing box office success was possible in a world of streaming.
But Swift’s globetrotting tour beat out Barbie with almost $2 billion in revenue, and a re-release of her past albums to reclaim the rights.
It is Swift’s second appearance after sharing the 2017 cover with other “Silence Breakers” who spoke out against sexual misconduct.
Time Magazine editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs said Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a force of nature and a “source of light”.
“Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story,” 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.”
In her first in-depth interview in almost four years for the Time cover story, Swift opened up on her career shake-ups and romantic hook-ups, being uncharacteristically candid in a non-dis-break-up-track kind-of-way about her relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce.
“Football is awesome, it turns out. I’ve been missing out my whole life,” she said, revealing they were dating for a “significant amount of time” before it became public.
“By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”
She also spoke about how her Kim Kardashian and Kanye West feud was a “bleak” moment.
“You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before,” Swift said.
She was referring to West’s song Famous which carries the lyrics “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous”. West claimed that Swift had consented to the lyrics.
Swift denied the claim and then Kardashian released a recording of a conversation which appeared to imply that Swift was lying and had given the couple permission. Kardashian also implied Swift was a “snake.”
While Swift beat Barbie in both ticket sales and the cover of TIME, she placed the Robbie blockbuster in the same category as The Eras Tour and Beyonce’s Rennaissance Tour as “a three-part summer of feminine extravaganza”.
“To make a fun, entertaining blast of a movie, with that commentary,” she says of Barbie, “I cannot imagine how hard that was, and Greta [Gerwig] made it look so easy.”
Last year’s Person of The Year, which dates back to 1927, was Volodymyr Zelenskyy and “the spirit of Ukraine”, for the resistance the country has shown in the face of another Person of the Year, Vladimir Putin.
Other winners this year include OpenAI’s Sam Altman as CEO of the Year, Argentinian soccer star Lionel Messi as Athlete of the Year, and stage actor Alex Newell as Breakthrough of the Year.
Originally published as Taylor Swift beats Barbie as Person of the Year
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