The Taylor Swift machine is completely inescapable – is it a recipe for catastrophe?

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To say that the previous week has been a busy one for Taylor Swift is an understatement. She’s had her potential Super Bowl journey schedule mentioned by the Japanese embassy. She’s been branded a part of a left-wing psyop designed to safe Joe Biden a second time period within the White House. She’s been the topic of feverish hypothesis: was she about to announce the discharge of a new model of Reputation? Oh, she’s additionally made Grammy historical past as the one particular person to win the Album of the Year trophy 4 instances. And then used an acceptance speech to herald the arrival of one other album, The Tortured Poets Department. Exhausting, proper? But the occasions of the previous week will not be anomalous for Swift. Over the previous 12 months or so, she one way or the other appears to have pulled off an unimaginable feat: levelling up into a strata of fame nicely past the tier of superstardom she’s beforehand loved.

Her Eras Tour, a three-hour-plus marathon by way of her profession to this point, has grow to be the first tour ever to gross over $1bn. Even should you haven’t been, or watched the live performance film launched final October (the highest-grossing movie of its sort ever, naturally), you’ll have in all probability been capable of piece collectively a lot of the present from the abundance of footage on social media. Her re-released albums earn a flurry of five-star critiques – usually a a lot hotter crucial reception than they picked up the primary time round. Her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs participant Travis Kelce has additionally meant that a complete new set of cameras are following her each transfer when she attends his soccer video games; their romance has additionally been greeted as some type of archetypal all-American love story. And in line with an e mail I acquired earlier this week, she’s one way or the other induced a rise in gross sales of beads and elastic on the craft chain Hobbycraft, too.

Swift doesn’t simply dominate the dialog: it more and more seems like she is the dialog. She is omnipresent in a approach that isn’t speculated to occur as of late, our pursuits apparently more and more diffuse because of algorithms designed to guide us down personalised rabbit holes. Everything from politics to popular culture may be seen by way of Swift specs. This can lead to some fairly weird reporting, the place each occasion is refracted and reframed to one way or the other relate to her. Take the Golden Globes ceremony final month, when actors Emma Stone and Ayo Edebiri’s award wins have been breathlessly written up… when it comes to Swift’s vociferous approval from the viewers. We’ve reached the purpose the place Taylor clapping at one thing is extra of a story than the factor itself. Similarly, if she doesn’t do one thing – like asserting the approaching launch of Reputation (Taylor’s Version), for instance – that’s a story too.

When did Swift grow to be so totally ubiquitous? As far again as 2014, across the launch of 1989, Bloomberg felt assured sufficient to declare that “Taylor Swift is the music industry”. It additionally launched a tour that put her firmly on the coronary heart of the movie star information cycle, because of an array of more and more inconceivable cameos and visitor performers becoming a member of her on stage (Lisa Kudrow singing “Smelly Cat”? Mr Worldwide himself, Pitbull? Sure, why not?).

The 1989 tour broke a string of data; for most artists, it would in all probability represent a industrial peak, by no means to be repeated, not to mention surpassed. But Swift’s present success makes it look comparatively marginal. The final time I noticed Swift in live performance was in 2015, when she carried out at British Summer Time competition in Hyde Park. I might purchase three tickets by turning as much as work early to load up the Ticketmaster web page – it felt like a army operation then, however pales compared to the intense lengths to which many resorted with a purpose to safe their spot on the Eras Tour. Demand again then was excessive. But it wasn’t “set your alarms, mobilise the group chat, book the day off work, drain your bank account” excessive.

Swift’s cultural domination appeared to wane a little within the aftermath. She was smarting from one other well-publicised row with Kanye West; Reputation and Lover, nonetheless wildly profitable by all different requirements, didn’t fairly hit 1989’s peak. But her cachet then stepped up a gear thanks to 2 occasions. In 2019, impresario Scooter Braun purchased the grasp recordings for her first six albums, a sale that Swift stated “stripped me of my life’s work, that I wasn’t given an opportunity to buy”. The globally well-known artist genuinely felt like an underdog, a decade’s artistic work taken from her by business energy gamers. And so she determined to regularly re-record every certainly one of them, releasing the primary in 2021; the method, Swift argued, was additionally about reclaiming what had been taken from her. A possible profession disaster was transmuted into a nice story, one which followers might actually get behind. Swift has at all times fastidiously dropped clues into her songwriting, however because of “Taylor’s Versions”, her each transfer has grow to be an Easter egg for followers to puzzle over like Bletchley Park cryptographers.

And in the summertime of 2020, when the world was shut inside throughout the pandemic, she dropped a shock album, Folklore. It confirmed Swift in a extra meditative mode, telling emotionally acute tales from imagined views. It was intimate, pared again and felt like an acceptable soundtrack for a time when our lives appeared to shrink. The album put paid to the persistent (and incorrect) criticism that Swift solely wrote about her personal relationships, and appeared to win over one other swathe of followers who’d beforehand shrugged her off; her sonically comparable follow-up Evermore, launched a few months later, doubled down on this new pressure of success.

With these two data, the 4 “Taylor’s Versions”, her 2022 album Midnights, and the forthcoming The Tortured Poets Department, Swift could have launched eight data in 4 years. If it seems like she has always been in promo mode, that’s as a result of, nicely, she’s had a lot of labor to promote (she’s marketed every re-record like a model new file, with a load of merch to match). It’s not simply Folklore’s recent sound that has drawn in a new set of followers. Re-releasing her again catalogue has been like a sign increase, introducing her work to a youthful technology and making it present: what number of different artists might rating a No 1 with a 10-minute model of an album observe launched nearly a decade earlier than, as Swift did with “All Too Well”?

Swift has at all times been fastidiously attuned to her personal ranges of fame. In the (in)well-known 2016 name between her and Kanye West, she notes: “I feel like right now, I’m this close to overexposure.” In 2024, she has far exceeded the extent of fame she was experiencing again then (and she or he’s in all probability extraordinarily conscious of this). But there are not any indicators of her dialling issues again, as she might need accomplished beforehand. In reality, she’s extra current than ever, and seemingly far much less guarded when it involves her love life too.

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In some methods, this feels just like the logical results of her public persona. Taylor has at all times offered herself because the every-girl (“she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers,” to cite her 2008 observe “You Belong with Me”). She is not a star whose picture is constructed on mystique and distance however on closeness and relatability (although you would possibly take the latter with a pinch of salt). Keeping this up requires visibility: we have to see her cheering from the soccer stands, dancing at awards exhibits and going out to dinner with a revolving line-up of associates. Ordinary-ish issues, with a liberal smattering of celeb glitter.

Of course, it’s a long-held double customary that by merely present within the public eye, girls are in search of consideration, making an excessive amount of noise, doing an excessive amount of. Perhaps Swift is difficult that, in all her ubiquity. Perhaps we’re simply in the midst of a well-deserved victory lap. But you do should surprise: isn’t it exhausting for her? What is the aim right here? Shifting a few extra restricted version vinyls?

And whereas being well-liked shouldn’t be a downside, the difficulty is – as some (courageous) commentators have poked their heads above the parapet to level out – that there’s a danger of Swift turning into untouchable, her each transfer gushed over. This turns into all of the extra complicated if Swift’s each motion is framed – by some reporters, by her PR machine – as an act of empowerment. If we see her profession this fashion, then it turns into nearly uncharitable to query, not to mention criticise, say, a billionaire rolling out limitless merch tie-ins for her re-recording tasks. In constructing her up and up and up, one other, larger backlash seems like a real danger too.

Instead, we should always need critics to unpick her work thoughtfully and propel her to even higher issues, moderately than applauding her with out query. It’s nice to have “Taylor’s Version” on the market, however it shouldn’t be the one story.