“I was sixteen when suddenly” Taylor Swift was taking over my generation’s pop music culture. “So drop everything now” and listen up to how Taylor Swift is inherently and unarguably one of the best music artists of our time. Swift has been making music for so long that you often hear people saying they like her old stuff. Well, “the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now,” so let’s talk about how she is more popular than ever. She is truly “timeless.”
After being sold out by a man named Scooter Braun, in 2020, Taylor Swift decided to re-record her albums in order to obtain ownership. This sale gave Braun all the rights to Swift’s albums, so that if anyone wanted to use her songs without copyright infringement it would have to go through Braun and the profit would be going straight to him. Braun has a history of working with Kanye West, and if you know your Swiftie knowledge you would know that Kanye West and Swift have some “bad
blood.” This “bad blood” famously started in 2009 when West rudely took the stage to interrupt Swift’s acceptance speech to voice his opinion on how Beyoncé should’ve won the ‘Best Female Video’ award instead.
This new label with Braun made Swift quite uncomfortable and “I think he knows.” Instead of backing down and accepting her fate, she decided to take a stand and start her re-recordings. For Taylor Swift, this was “better than revenge.” Starting with her popular 2008 album, “Fearless” re-released in 2021. She followed that with “Red” in 2021, “Speak Now” in 2023, and now “1989” is planned to be released on October 27th.
The real cause for Taylor’s well-deserved, unprecedented fame is really thanks to the tour that is dominating communities all over the world, The Eras Tour. Freshman Clover Ladd attended a July concert in Santa Clara. “It was my peak moment in life,” Ladd said. “It was insane just to be breathing the same air as Taylor Swift.”
In the media, we haven’t been hearing much different. The concert is being described as a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you can only imagine once you’ve seen it yourself. Swifties and non-Swifties all over the globe have been ”wonderstruck, blushing all the way home.” For these Swifties, “everything has changed.”
If you don’t think Swift is spectacular, you can’t deny the facts. Taylor Swift has won a total of 540 awards in her career so far and with no doubt, her effortlessly talented self will continue to win many more. Not to mention that until 2020, Swift held the title of being the youngest artist to ever win the Grammy Award “Album of the Year” at just the age of 20. That’s only a few years off from how old some of us high schoolers are right now. Swift also kick-started her career as a high school student at age 15, which is typically the age of your common freshman by the end of the school year. And yeah, she won that Grammy a long time ago, but if we look more recently at the 2023 Video Music Awards from September, we see Swift taking home nine awards in just one night which is one away from the record-breaking 10 awards taken home in one night by Peter Gabriel in 1987.
Honestly, at this point what are you doing if you’re not listening to Taylor Swift? There is a “blank
space” in your Spotify if you’re not a part of her 100 million monthly listeners. If pop music isn’t for you, Taylor Swift also has songs that fall under the country, folk, and alternative genres. Junior Dinah Sul- livan considers herself a Swiftie. “She’s able to sing about her own unique personal experiences, but it still connects and relates to everyone, because of her songwrit- ing. I think that’s a really beautiful thing.” Sullivan said when asked what makes Taylor Swift special to her.
A lot of debate has been brought up, this summer specifically, about her expensive ticket prices. There are many valid reasons for the expense of going to her concert. It’s well known that Swift is widely
liked, which means there will be a high demand for tickets. When demand increases and exceeds ticket supply, the price has to increase. Another reason is that scalpers and resellers often sell tickets at inflated prices. Artists typically try to stop scalping, although fans still get tricked and sneaky deals are made. Taylor Swift has made an abundance of money from this concert alone. Despite “the rumors,” Swift is not as selfish as she is made out to be when it comes to handling this money. Taylor Swift took “Never be so clever, You Forget to Be Kind” to a whole new level when she paid over $50 million of her personal money in bonuses to hundreds of crew members and staff along with giving out handwritten notes. Every truck driver got an extra check for $100,000 dollars, which is a lot of money for someone who on average only makes $57k-$84k per year. For these staff members, she made their “wildest dreams” come true.
“I love her so much, her music just makes me feel crazy,” Ladd said. Taylor Swift is taking the world by storm once again. “Are you ready for it?”
