Are you ready for it?(1) Taylor swift is the man(2) and she has won time’s person of the year and is the first entertainer to do so. How and why did she get this award? Probably the effect that she has had on pop culture and the economy this year. If you have been on the internet this year that you have probably seen at least one video about Taylor Swift or her eras tour and how they have both made a place in this world(3).
The eras tour has been a huge success and its impact cannot be overstated. It is estimated to have already made about $780 million and will make billions of dollars, that’s right, billions with a B. With about 70,000 people attending each show, Taylor surely is the loudest woman each town has ever seen(4), leaving a huge impact on whatever city her tour goes through. It started in November of 2022 when Taylor was enchanted(5) to announce her eras tour and the tickets went on sale on Ticketmaster and crashed the site with how much traffic there was on the site, causing lawsuits. The eras tour started in march after months of rigorous training on swift’s part. In her person of the year interview with time, she says had previously toured like a frat guy, drinking a lot and performing with almost no preparation. This time she had had an epiphany(6) and instead ran every day while singing to each of her songs and matching the pace (if you want to try something like this, check out Allie Bennett on Spotify and her treadmill strut playlists for different artists) and all of this training has paid off, She has the choreography of this show down cold and because of that gets to interact with fans while on stage and can push through anything, including being able to come in the rain(7) and dance through heavy storms during a show in new jersey her heel breaking off of her shoe during the lover set in a recent show in Rio (that heel, which was thrown off stage and caught by a fan, is being sold at auction to pay for his cousin’s cancer treatment and the bidding is currently over 20k). In each city, aside from the local economy being boosted through hotels, restaurants, and stores, Swift also reportedly anonymously donates thousands of dollars to local food banks in each stop of the tour. In Arizona on the first stop of her tour, Swift’s donation apparently allowed the network to send several tractor-trailers filled with 40,000 pounds of fresh produce to its member food banks.
Because of the success of the in person tour and the amount of people who were not able to get tickets to this tour, Swift decided to say what if this was a movie(8) and release the Eras tour movie. Unlike her previous tour movies (Speak now, RED, 1989 World Tour, all available on YouTube and the Reputation Tour available on Netflix till the end of 2023) She decided to release the eras tour movie to theatres. Usually when a person releases a movie to theatres they have to go through a distributor to get their movie in theatres. They should have said no(9) like Taylor did, she decided to simply record her tour and then distribute it to theatres, cutting out the middleman entirely. Time reported that the concert film has made an incredible $248.9 million at the box office, cementing itself as the highest grossing concert film at the US box office.
Aside from making money for herself, Swifties will flock to buy anything she says, Travis Kelce (her new boyfriend and a football player for the Kansas City Chiefs) had his jersey sales jump 400% after Taylor attended one of his games which was more than anyone’s wildest dreams(10). Because of her appearances at these games, she has managed to make the most popular sport in America even more popular with many Swifties starting watching football and the next chiefs game after the first one she attended being the most watched game since the Super Bowl. She has also helped craft stores all over the world. Because of the lyric so make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it / You’ve got no reason to be afraid(11) many Swifties have been making kandi (using pony beads and elastic to make bracelets in varying levels of complexity) called friendship bracelets to trade with other fans at concerts or in public.
Along with an economic genius, she is a marketing mastermind(12) . In September she became the most googled person of 2023 with her 1989 vault track puzzles. You have probably heard about the “Taylor’s version” project following scooter brauns acquisition of the masters for Swift’s first 6 studio albums. Instead of tolerating it(13), she decided to begin again(14) to regain the rights to her songs She has been re-recording her albums and for each re-release new tracks that were “in the vault” are released. The most recent re-recording was 1989 (Taylor’s version) with 5 new tracks. To discover these tracks fans had to solve a labyrinth(15) of 33 million puzzles by googling her name and typically unscrambling a word. The 33 million puzzles were completed within 24 hours, revealing the titles of the tracks which were: slut!, say don’t go, now that we don’t talk, suburban legends, and is it over now. With her time a collage was made with countless Easter eggs for her fans to find, causing a lot of discussion and theories to form online causing a lot of hype for her.
Song references
1. Call It What You Want – Reputation
2. The Man – Lover
3. A Place In This World – Taylor Swift
4. The Last Great American Dynasty – Folklore
5. Enchanted – Speak Now
6. Epiphany – Folklore
7. Come In The Rain – Fearless
8. If This Was A Movie – Fearless
9. Should Have Said No – Taylor Swift
10. Wildest Dreams – 1989
11. You’re On Your Own Kid – Midnights
12. Mastermind – Midnights
13. Tolerate It – Evermore
14. Begin Again – Red
15. Labyrinth – Midnights