2023 Is Most Definitely Taylor’s TIME
• In the heady company of 14 U.S. Presidents and three popes, TIME‘s 2023 Person of The Year is the force-of-nature known as Taylor Swift.
As TIME‘s Sam Jacobs reports, “Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story… While her popularity has grown across the decades, this is the year that Swift, 33, achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force. She did it by embracing what she does better than anyone, entertaining and writing songs that connect with people. Swift is also a symbol of generational change: she is only the fourth solo Person of the Year born in the past half century.”
The story continues, “In the 17 years since her debut, Swift has notched more No. 1 albums than any other woman in history. This year alone she had three. She was everywhere in 2023, filling stadiums and breaking records, which meant we were forced to find novel ways to measure the magnitude of her reach.”
In 2023, world leaders and mayors competed to bring her monumentally successful Eras Tour to their jurisdictions. Swift has become a feature of American soft power: a U.S. diplomat told me how meaningful it was to get Swift to agree to play in his host country. And Swift, as we now know, has had a Midas touch, improving the fortunes of every place she visits and business she celebrates. Just ask the NFL about its millions of new fans. Or your secretary of state: tens of thousands of fans registered to vote after she encouraged them on Instagram, spiking visits to Vote.org.
In closing, Jacobs notes, “Swift has been both avatar and author of shifting narratives, never more so than in 2023. Where do they take us? It might look something like what Swift has created, making a space for 70,000 people, night after night, to experience joy together. What is a higher form of influence, after all, than giving millions of fans, young and old, the time of their lives, where they can revel not only in Swift’s voice but in finding their own? These moments were all the more magical for taking place as we exited a pandemic, rediscovering the communal experiences that were so recently taken from us.” Read the full text of Jacobs’ excellent story posted at time.com.
