Freshly minted billionaire Taylor Swift is inarguably the most successful musician currently on the planet, and her cult-like fandom has made it essentially impossible to criticize her in any substantive way — at this point, it feels like we have little choice but to be swallowed by her world-dominating vice grip on culture, and it seems Time magazine agrees.
For the first time since the inaugural Person of the Year in 1927 (racist and aviator Charles Lindbergh), Time has named a musician as its Person of the Year, bestowing the honour on Swift for being "the individual who most shaped the headlines over the previous 12 months, for better or for worse," as is the magazine's stated criteria.
That much is pretty well undeniable — this year saw Swift become the first living artist to have five albums in the Billboard Top 10 at the same time, her private jet was responsible for 8,293.54 tonnes of emissions in 2022, and the opening night of her Eras Tour broke the record for the most attended concert by a female artist in the U.S. (a title previously held by Madonna) — and that's just to name a fraction of her recent achievements.
This isn't technically Swift's first Time cover, as she was featured as one of many Silence Breakers in 2017 after she won a legal battle against a DJ who groped her. This year, she beat out candidates like the Hollywood strikers, the Trump prosecutors, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Sam Altman, Barbie, King Charles III and Jerome Powell.
Time Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs stated, in an explanation of the magazine's choice, "In a divided world, where too many institutions are failing, Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light. No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well."
He continued, writing that Swift "achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force."
The feature, written by Sam Lansky, sees Swift talk about everything from the insanely expensive and competitive Eras Tour tickets — "[Fans] had to work really hard to get the tickets. I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium" — to her beefs with Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Scooter Braun, and her relationship with Travis Kelce.
She describes meeting Kelce after he "very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. We started hanging out right after that."
It's a cute story, but putting Swift on blast (or reviewing her work) doesn't usually go quite as well for most other people, particularly female music journalists — some people get dates, some get rape and death threats. Such is life!
You can read the whole feature here.
For the first time since the inaugural Person of the Year in 1927 (racist and aviator Charles Lindbergh), Time has named a musician as its Person of the Year, bestowing the honour on Swift for being "the individual who most shaped the headlines over the previous 12 months, for better or for worse," as is the magazine's stated criteria.
That much is pretty well undeniable — this year saw Swift become the first living artist to have five albums in the Billboard Top 10 at the same time, her private jet was responsible for 8,293.54 tonnes of emissions in 2022, and the opening night of her Eras Tour broke the record for the most attended concert by a female artist in the U.S. (a title previously held by Madonna) — and that's just to name a fraction of her recent achievements.
This isn't technically Swift's first Time cover, as she was featured as one of many Silence Breakers in 2017 after she won a legal battle against a DJ who groped her. This year, she beat out candidates like the Hollywood strikers, the Trump prosecutors, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Sam Altman, Barbie, King Charles III and Jerome Powell.
Time Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs stated, in an explanation of the magazine's choice, "In a divided world, where too many institutions are failing, Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light. No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well."
He continued, writing that Swift "achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force."
The feature, written by Sam Lansky, sees Swift talk about everything from the insanely expensive and competitive Eras Tour tickets — "[Fans] had to work really hard to get the tickets. I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium" — to her beefs with Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and Scooter Braun, and her relationship with Travis Kelce.
She describes meeting Kelce after he "very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. We started hanging out right after that."
It's a cute story, but putting Swift on blast (or reviewing her work) doesn't usually go quite as well for most other people, particularly female music journalists — some people get dates, some get rape and death threats. Such is life!
You can read the whole feature here.
