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Taylor Swift Played Her Cards Better Than We Could Have Imagined

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There’s a universe in which “Taylor’s Versions” amounted to a largely abstract victory while making a mess out of Swift’s catalog. Instead, they’ve put her on track to becoming the most popular artist in the history of streaming music.

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In the 17 years since her debut album, Taylor Swift has gone on to dominate not only the music world but the cultural conversation.

As the megastar prepares to grace Australian stages later this week, it seems Swifties are everywhere, from the schoolyard to scholarly symposiums.

So why is the world so obsessed with Tay-Tay, and do we need to take Swifties more seriously?

Studying Swift

In Australia right now, Swift holds the top five spots on the ARIA album chart, headlines about her romance with US footballer Travis Kelce are everywhere and on TikTok fans are wildly churning out friendship bracelets spelling out the names of her songs.

Swift kicks off the seven-show Australian leg of her Eras Tour at Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday.

Earlier this week, a group of scholarly Swifties converged just a few kilometres up the road for Swiftposium, an academic deep dive into the singer's cultural impact.

Keynote speaker Brittany Spanos, a senior writer at Rolling Stone, teaches a class thought to be "the world's first course on Taylor Swift", at NYU's Clive Davis School of Recorded Music.

Her course isn't the first to be hinged on the work of a famous musician, but when it launched in 2022 the media interest was intense.

Ms Spanos says for her, a self-confessed Swift fan deeply entrenched in the comings and goings of the music world, the press attention was "the first hint that the vibe was shifting dramatically around Taylor Swift".

"(Last year) would confirm my suspicions that she had somehow become the most god-like superstar in the planet, bigger than I thought was even possible," Ms Spanos says.

A relatable shapeshifter

When we took to the streets to find out what makes Swift so popular among one of her key demographics - teenagers - the word "relatable" was a big recurring theme.

And Swiftposium co-organiser Jennifer Beckett agrees.

"She's an amazing lyricist, she speaks about her life and as people have grown up with Taylor Swift ... there's always a song that speaks to the moment you're in," Dr Beckett says.

"Taylor Swift has been compared to a lot of poets like Sylvia Plath ... she's not just talking about relationships - she's vulnerably talking about relationships.

"She's taking you through the emotions she's having. It gives you something to connect to and ... there's a simplicity to what she does, which makes it easy to grab on to."

From roots in country, Swift has reinvented herself multiple times.

After crossing into the world of pop, she worked with indie darling Jack Antonoff on the album 1989 in a partnership that endures today.

Then stripped-back albums like Folklore and Evermore, featuring collaborations with The National and Bon Iver saw her shapeshift again.

And with each reinvention she's brought with her a swathe of new fans.

"We've watched her grow up, we've watched her turn into different people along the way - she has reinvented herself," Dr Beckett says.

"And that's part of the things that keep you attached to an artist."

Strong fan connections

Back on the street, fans say the star's connection with Swifties is another huge factor in her success.

And Ms Spanos agrees Swift's ability to intimately connect with her admirers is one of her superpowers.

"She's always been so engaged with her fandom," she says.

"She's commenting on videos, she's engaging with people ... she's really active in a way that's so fascinating - she doesn't have to do, but she still chooses to do it.

"And [she] seems to understand the in-jokes that are happening (among fans) and makes references to them ... she's so good at that kind of intuitive marketing and connection with her fans."

The star's use of Easter eggs - tiny messages hidden in places like liner notes, lyrics or Instagram captions - also keeps fans highly engaged and is a source of much discussion online.

But both Dr Beckett and Ms Spanos acknowledge that Swift is also a "savvy" businesswoman.

"She makes very, very good decisions. And she has an excellent PR team," Dr Beckett says.

She says Swift's move to re-record her old albums after her masters were sold to music producer Scooter Braun was a serious power move.

"It's like a director's cut of a movie, right? That's effectively what she's done ... and then when she renegotiated her new record contract, she negotiated it so that she owns her masters," Dr Beckett says.

"I've never heard of that in the industry before - so she's reshaping industry."

Why Taylor, why now?

Ms Spanos says in the pre-internet world "all-consuming pop-cultural moments", such as Beatlemania, Madonna madness and the hype around Michael Jackon's Thriller, were more common.

"[But] we have so few monocultural moments these days, largely because of how much entertainment consumption is determined by algorithms that allow us to tune out anything that does not match or adhere to our preset tastes and standards," she says.

"When something like this particular Swift career moment creates a strange universal bond with millions across the globe, it is hard to not want to be part of something bigger than yourself, bonded by friendship bracelets."

Dr Beckett says there's a "kind of legacy of having gone to that gig" that people are keen to be a part of when it comes to the Eras Tour.

"I think about my dad talking about how he went to a Doors concert in Dublin," she says.

"Having been at an event like that is something you will have for the rest of your life."

It's a love story

Ms Spanos says the public conversation about Swift's relationship with American footballer Travis Kelce is also an interesting indicator of the star's present popularity.

"She seems to be in a moment where more people love her than ... truly hate her," she says.

"The conversations around her have changed so much."

A decade ago, people would have been saying "I can't wait for the break-up album", Ms Spanos says.

But right now, fans are genuinely thrilled for the lovebirds.

"They're like the royal couple in the US right now ... that's so new for how people engage with her, and I'm kind of curious - what's going to happen with it?"

Dr Beckett suggests another reason for Swift's enormous popularity at present is the hope she offers fans.

"I think, at the moment with everything that's going on in the world ... we're looking for the hope," Dr Beckett says.

"We're looking for the person who displays their emotions in a way that is ... not horribly violent.

"We want that sincerity ... we're actively craving it - and Taylor Swift, in many ways, provides that for us."

A force to be reckoned with

According to Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sally Capp, Swift's three Melbourne shows are expected to provide the city with $1.2 billion worth of value.

Melbourne's major events usually bring in about $3.3 billion annually - and Swift's visit will provide roughly a third of this in a single weekend.

But it isn't a phenomenon that's unique to Australia.

Wherever Swift performs, economic benefits flow, in an effect dubbed "Swiftonomics".

Every road Swift walks is seemingly paved with gold.

Last December, she was named Times magazine's Person of the Year.

And although her hesitancy to use her enormous platform to champion change has attracted significant criticism, she's also credited with increasing voter registration in the US on several occasions, with the power of a single social media post.

There's speculation about whether she'll weigh in on the upcoming battle for the White House.

Dr Beckett says while for some people the idea of studying Swift in an academic setting is fanciful, the pop star has an enormous amount of sway.

"When you come across someone who has the level of power and influence that Taylor Swift ... has right now, economically, in terms of changing hearts and minds, all of that - we really need to unpack it," Dr Beckett says.

"And also, I think it's really easy to look at something like pop culture, or particular figures, and go, 'Oh, they're just a pop star with a lot of teenage girls who like them - what serious about that?'

"Teenage girls are very serious people ... but they also have an enormous amount of economic clout, and they're going to grow up to be voters.

"So, I think that in belittling Taylor Swift, you're belittling young people in many ways ... and that is never a good thing to do."

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How Taylor Swift became 'the most god-like superstar on the planet'

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As the megastar prepares to grace Australian stages later this week, Swift's name is everywhere - from the schoolyard to scholarly symposiums. So what is it about Tay-tay that keeps fans coming back for more?

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Taylor Swift's new album, The Tortured Poets Department, is not one of her best. Critics have complained about its exhausting length (31 songs, two hours), subdued tone and lyrical wound-rubbing. Her decision to announce it at the Grammy awards, months before its release on 19 April, was widely seen as tacky, snatching the media spotlight from other winners.

For any other artist, this might be a perilous moment of bubble-bursting hubris, but 34-year-old Taylor Alison Swift is not any other artist. The album set a streaming record on Spotify - 300m in one day and 1bn in five - and made her the first artist in history to secure the top 14 spots on the Billboard Hot 100. In the US, it sold 2.6m copies in the first week, second only to Adele's 3.4m nine years ago, with 859,000 on vinyl alone.

Swift is a formidable singer-songwriter, but these days she is as likely to feature in the business pages as the music pages. Last October, off the back of the first leg of her Eras tour, she was declared a billionaire - the first person to pass that milestone through music-related earnings alone rather than other investments. Eras became the first billion-dollar tour in history, selling 2.4m tickets in a single day. Forbes estimated she was earning $10m-$13m (£8m-£10m) a night. And the tour movie is the highest grossing of all time, at $262m.

"The Eras tour turned out to be a juggernaut that even she couldn't have anticipated," says Carl Wilson, pop critic for Slate. "I can't remember another phenomenon like it in live music."

As the tour made its way across North America, local economies boomed, with fans spending an average of $1,325, including travel, accommodation, food and drink. The UK leg is predicted to boost the economy by £1bn, while Singapore outbid rival nations to ensure it was the only Swift-blessed country in south-east Asia. Media fascination with the tour has given birth to a new word, Swiftonomics, and university courses devoted to it.

To find a similarly dominant artist, you'd have to go back to Michael Jackson in the 80s, but thanks to the smartphone, Swift is still more ubiquitous. "Even when Thriller was the biggest thing in the world, you could spend a day without thinking about Michael Jackson," Wilson says of the artist's 1982 album. "You're going to run across something about Taylor Swift every day of your life. When people look back on this last decade, she's the face in the montage, right?"

That Swift is one of the most financially canny pop stars in history is beyond doubt. She has leveraged her power to cut deals with concert promoters, record labels and platforms that have never been made before. And while she has an A-list team, including renowned attorney Don Passman, there is no doubt that Swift, the daughter of a financial adviser, makes the big calls herself. What is less clear is what her disproportionate success means to the music industry at large. Is she making the weather or simply capitalising on existing trends? Have her spectacular achievements helped other artists, hurt them, or made no difference at all? As Will Page, former chief economist of Spotify and PRS for Music, puts it, "Does a Taylor Swift tide lift all boats?"

Swift has been very famous and very rich since 2012, when her Red album sealed her crossover from country music ingenue to pop star. Her 2018 Reputation tour grossed $345.7m. But that tense, paranoid album sold far less than its hit-packed predecessor, 1989. It seemed to mark the end of her imperial phase. In fact, her peak was yet to come, thanks to her smart response to two giant misfortunes: one personal, one global.

In 2019, Swift went to war with her former record label, Big Machine Records, after it was bought by the impresario Scooter Braun. Music copyright is split between the song (publishing) and the recording (masters). When Swift signed to Big Machine at the age of 15, she gave the label the master rights to her first six studio albums. Now she wanted to buy them back, and when Braun wouldn't grant her the deal she wanted, her response was simple: she would rerecord the albums, with bonus material, as "Taylor's Versions".

"She exploited a very specific hole in her crappy Nashville contract," says Cliff Fluet of law firm Lewis Silkin. "People are saying, 'Are you going to see other artists doing this?' Spoiler alert: no. Because there will be cast-iron rerecording restrictions in their agreements. But it will make older artists who are out of rerecording restrictions realise they have a whole new asset to sell."

Eras demonstrates how powerful music is as an economic driver - but getting Taylor Swift to come to town is not a strategy

It was an extraordinary experiment. And it worked. All four Taylor's Versions to date - Fearless, Red, Speak Now, 1989 - topped the US Billboard 200, as if they were new releases, and became the definitive versions. In its first six months, 1989 (Taylor's Version) outstreamed the original release by three to one. She also annihilated the "sync" value of Big Machine's recordings (now owned by a private equity company) because she owns the publishing, so she can require anybody wanting to license one of her songs for film, TV or video game soundtracks to use Taylor's Version.

Usually a back catalogue is only seriously monetised once an artist is old or dead. Swift effectively turned herself into a legacy artist while still young and active, and struck a blow for artists' rights against the big, bad industry, personified by Braun. "Her fans are interested in her business issues," says Damon Krukowski, an indie musician, author and campaigner for artists' rights. "She made the whole master rights fight participatory, calling it Taylor's Version - it's my version for you, the fan, not the business version."

The second major setback Swift was able to turn to her advantage was the pandemic. Before Covid-19, she was preparing to tour her 2019 album Lover, including a headlining slot at Glastonbury. When she was forced off the road, her solution was to make more music. Over the last four years, she has released four new studio albums - Folklore, Evermore, Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department - alongside four Taylor's Versions. This avalanche of material, combined with the enforced five-year live hiatus, raised demand for Eras tickets to hysterical level. Swift won again.

The Eras tour united the rerecordings and the new albums in a career-spanning set averaging more than three hours - a kind of self-authored on-the-road biopic. "She wants to foster that sense of 'Look at how we've grown together'," Wilson says. "She's always promoting the whole catalogue." Most strikingly, her 2019 fan favourite Cruel Summer wasn't even a single until its live popularity turned it into a global chart-topper.

Swift on stage in Stockholm last month, on the Swedish leg of her Eras tour. Photograph: TT News Agency/Alamy Live News

Swift's fans are uniquely invested in her narrative - not just her obsessively scrutinised relationships with actor Joe Alwyn, the 1975's Matty Healy and current partner American footballer Travis Kelce, but her creative journey. She has never been an untouchable demigod like Jackson or Prince, keeping fans at arm's length. On a stadium stage, she works the camera like an actor, using tiny gestures and expressions to signal intimacy all the way back to row ZZ so every fan feels personally seen. On social media, she frames consumption as an act of devotion. "My mind is blown," she told her 95.3 million X followers on 28 April. "I'm completely floored by the love you've shown this album. 2.6 million ARE YOU ACTUALLY SERIOUS??"

"She has a remarkable parasocial relationship with her fans," Krukowski says. "Make your personal purchase and she's going to be grateful. It's a consumer relationship. She's not alone in that, but she excels at it."

Swift manages to be both authentic singer-songwriter and unabashed hyper-capitalist. Fans are increasingly aware of the realities of the music industry - like, subscribe, share, buy - and Swift makes them feel like proud participants in her commercial achievements. While rappers have always been comfortable talking about money, bullishly business-minded artists such as Mick Jagger or Metallica's Lars Ulrich have traditionally inspired suspicion. "Commerce used to be a dirty word," Fluet says. "Now it's like, 'I'm an industry, a conglomerate. I'm Taylor Swift Inc.' She's taking the ickiness out of commerce and allowing new artists to really be aware of the business: 'Well, if Taylor can do it ... '"

Like Bono before her, Swift is unusually interested in her cultural significance and commercial clout. She is the biggest because she really cares about being the biggest. But her supremacy is possible only because she no longer has any competition. "There's a vacuum that she's moved into," says Hanna Kahlert, cultural trends analyst at Midia Research. "It's more difficult to create superstars. It's very easy to find your niche, but it's very hard to grow beyond it. The big artists who predate streaming are the only ones who still have broad name recognition. Taylor Swift has got her superfan following and she's also got mainstream recognition."

The handful of younger stars who have made it of late - Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo - do not project blazing ambition for greater success, and Swift's 2010s peers have matured into prestige album artists (Beyoncé), fallen off the charts (Katy Perry), chosen residencies over mega-tours (Adele) or imploded (Kanye West). Whereas Jackson had Madonna and Prince vying for his crown, Swift has no rivals. "In a world where there are increasingly few global pop stars, she becomes even more unique," Page says. "Who else can do what she did?"

Damon Krukowski has recently been talking to Washington DC politicians about the Living Wage for Musicians Act, and the Swift effect has been striking. "Elected officials all know about Taylor Swift because their daughters and granddaughters want to go to the shows. The Senate actually held hearings about ticketing issues around the concerts. She does bring a lot of music industry issues to popular perception."

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Shain Shapiro, founder of economics consultancy Sound Diplomacy, credits the Eras tour's widely reported bonanza for hotels, restaurants, airlines and Uber drivers with influencing Congress's new Music Tourism Act, which aims to attract more visitors to music venues. It has also helped underline the message of his book This Must Be the Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better - up to a point. "Obviously it's incredible at demonstrating how powerful music is as an economic driver," he says, "but it can make people think it's easy. I see music as part of civic infrastructure, but focusing on the high level can make us discount the boring day-to-day things that are needed. This isn't a panacea. Getting Taylor Swift to come to town is not a strategy."

Swift's success reflects broader trends in the industry over the last few years. The bottom line is it is booming. After a dramatic decade-long slump due to the collapse of physical sales, revenue began to recover in 2015. In 2021, it surpassed the high-water mark of the CD boom. In 2023, it was worth $28.6bn. "The industry is making more money and more of it is getting through to artists," Page says. "Royalty rates and advances are going up, and contracts are getting cleaner. That was happening pre-Taylor and continues to happen post-Taylor." Live music is also thriving, up by one-fifth in the UK between 2019 and 2022, and exceeding £2bn for the first time.

We have a history of artists bitching about their labels, but her action is different. It's like, I'm bigger than the label

The catch is the vast gulf between superstars and everybody else, with half of concert revenue now going to stadiums and festivals. "The live music recovery is incredibly lopsided," Page says. " Go big or stay home. Taylor Swift exemplifies that." Such artists can demand up to 100% of the ticket price, forcing promoters to make their money with additional fees and higher bar prices. They can also jack up prices in the knowledge that fans will happily pay them: the £150 ticket is now standard.

"People will not economise when there is a must-see event," says Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust, a UK charity focused on grassroots venues. " These shows are not impacted by the economic climate." Smaller shows, however, are more exposed to belt-tightening, while falling alcohol consumption makes it harder to compensate with bar sales. The result is a crisis at the grassroots, with dozens of venues for new artists closing every year. Whether a Swift show drains budgets that would otherwise be spent at local venues is unclear, but there is certainly no trickle-down effect.

Swift's exceptional vinyl sales also fail to lift up other artists. In the US, she accounts for six of the top 10 vinyl bestsellers of the modern era and one in 15 vinyl sales in 2023. Remarkably, more than half of vinyl buyers don't own a turntable, so a majority of Swift's records are being bought as attractive artefacts rather than vessels for music. Michael Jackson's Thriller helped jolt the music industry out of its early-80s recession because fans going to the record shop would buy other records, too. "There was a reflected benefit to all of us from huge, year-defining releases," Krukowski says. "In fact, her product squeezes everyone else out of the store." Most physical sales of Swift's new album were pre-orders through her own website, cutting out retailers altogether.

With partner Travis Kelce at Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas in February. Photograph: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Yet Swift can still move the needle for everybody through her unmatched negotiating power. In 2015 she froze out the newly launched Apple Music to protest at its policy of not paying royalties during the three-month free trial period. Within days, Apple buckled. "We hear you @taylorswift13," tweeted Apple's Eddy Cue.

Recently, the industry was gripped by Universal Music Group's Mexican standoff with TikTok over the failure to agree a new licensing deal. In February, UMG pulled all of its music from the platform, including that of Swift, Rodrigo, Eilish and Ariana Grande. Swift, however, does not have a standard contract. In much the same way that she sold the Eras movie direct to cinemas rather than partnering with a studio, she simply licenses her albums to UMG to distribute. This enabled her to shock the industry by single-handedly breaking the boycott in April. Two weeks later, UMG made a deal. "Was it going to happen anyway?" Fluet says. "We can only speculate. But the day she went back, they must have been opening the champagne at TikTok Towers."

Swift sets the tempo. She pulled her catalogue from Spotify in 2014, claiming that " music should not be free ", but since she ended her embargo in 2017 no major artist has held out on purely financial grounds. She has helped to normalise contracts in which labels license masters for a fixed term rather than owning them in perpetuity, tipping the balance of power towards artists. "We have a history of artists bitching about their labels, but her action is quite different," Krukowski says. "It's like, 'Fuck you - I'm bigger than the label.'"

Swift is also the industry leader in monetising superfans: VIP ticket packages, deluxe editions, exclusive merchandise. "It's a glimpse of what the music industry is going to look like moving forward," Kahlert says. "Everyone's looking to superfans. Taylor Swift saw this coming a mile away." Other artists may not be able to match her success but they can learn from her technique. "Despite how insanely big she is, she manages to bring this unique personal touch," Kahlert says. "In an era of online ubiquity, fans are looking for something special and personalised that feels genuine."

Swift likes to present herself as a warrior for artists' rights, but could she be more collegiate and use her clout to improve the whole music ecosystem? Eilish has promoted ethical face-value resale and added a £1 ticket levy to fund Reverb, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable touring. Davyd has long been campaigning for a similar levy to support the grassroots. "A lot of the objections were that it was unworkable," he says. "As soon as Billie Eilish and her management decided they wanted it to happen, it happened." Whether or not megastar philanthropy should be expected to solve systemic problems is another question. "Should it be on Taylor Swift to give back out of the goodness of her heart?" Kahlert asks. "Because you're putting a lot of power in the hands of one individual."

Krukowski is sceptical that Swift's lessons can be widely applied when most artists are struggling to make a living. "Scale is required for any kind of success," he says. "The pitch is: 'That could be you.' But the reality is the opposite. That's the paradox of the industry right now. It's like the lottery. Anybody could be a millionaire, but buying lottery tickets is not a career."

What happens after the Eras tour concludes in Vancouver in December is an open question. Swift has no obvious successors, and the fact that she has already weathered a backlash circa Reputation means that she will be more resilient to another, but how long can this ubiquity last? She has always benefited from powerful foes but she has won every battle - with the industry, her peers, her ex-boyfriends. Her output of one new album and one rerecording a year seems unsustainable.

"There's obviously going to be some level of Taylor fatigue," Wilson says. "She might be smart to step to the side for a while." For him, Swift's most cheering achievement is proving a singer-songwriter can still be the world's most compelling and influential celebrity. "Three years ago, I was asking myself the question: do young people care about music as much as they did when I was young? Compared with video games and TV, does music play a cultural role in helping form who they are? With the Taylor phenomenon I find it hard to doubt that it does, and that's reassuring. I wouldn't have thought this could happen, but it has."

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It's the age of Swiftonomics - but will Taylor Swift's phenomenal success trickle down?

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Can one record-breaking megastar make a difference for struggling musicians and new artists?

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Swift was omnipresent in 2023. But embedded in her ascension to cultural goddess is a self-mythologizing that we're increasingly, disturbingly reluctant to challenge.

It may come as a surprise that it wasn't Taylor Swift referring to re-recording her hit albums as " collecting horcruxes and infinity stones" in her recent Time magazine Person of the Year profile that put me over the edge. (Although that kind of millennial speak also brings a twitch to my eye, even if it perfectly aligns with the perma-Tumblr brand that Swift has crafted for herself.) Rather, it was a quote from the article's scribe, Time 's West Coast editor Sam Lansky, that enraged me. Lansky's profile is a detailed and knowledgeable pop culture chronicle, but it takes little more than a single quote to reveal that the article is a Swift-approved puff piece.

Lansky says in his piece that, when Swift is speaking about her mythic journey to her current status as the untouchable queen of culture, he thinks about challenging her. "It did not always look like [a hero's journey]," he writes of the massive success of Reputation, an album Swift notes as an integral point in the arc of her redemption from tabloid target to critical darling. "She did not look like someone whose career had died... I am tempted to say this. But then I think, 'Who am I to challenge it, if that's how she felt?' The point is: She felt canceled."

Reading that should be all that anyone needs to know about the careful control that Swift has over her career and image, and the kinds of people that she not only surrounds herself with but also allows to peer into her life. She wants nothing more than to keep the narrative she has so meticulously crafted intact. This is her picture-perfect image of herself: a pop star who clawed her way back from the dregs of cultural cancelation to revive a career that, in actuality, never came close to dying. Swift seemingly let Lansky in because she could regulate the circumstances so precisely that even the most discerning part of his profile would end in the relinquished bow of a head.

While I don't think Swift should have to be defending her life every second that she's talking to a reporter, it's frightening how her cultural ubiquity has been able to entrance the world into a near-universal state of permanent praise. As someone who was a Swiftie for an entire decade of my life-now in recovery-I never thought that a person whose art I once admired so much could become insufferable. But Swift's record-breaking 2023 proved me wrong over and over again.

For as pervasive as she managed to be for nine months of the year, it's almost shocking to realize that news in Swift World was relatively quiet at the top of 2023. Swift was gearing up for her Eras Tour, which meant keeping a low profile throughout tour rehearsals and polishing up the re-recorded tracks on Speak Now (Taylor's Version) and 1989 (Taylor's Version). But by March, Swift was inescapable. The Eras Tour wasn't just a massive success; it was its own subculture. Fans made and traded friendship bracelets for the shows, speculated over which secret songs Swift would perform each night with their Swiftie-exclusive mathematical algorithms, and planned their lives out months in advance, in accordance with each stop.

The tour, an amalgamation of each of Swift's album cycles-complete with a micro-revival of each record's specific aesthetics and visual themes-was a dream come true for Swifties. It was a celebration of their love for their favorite artist, and a way for Swift to show her fans just how much their support has meant to her through the years. It was also a way to keep them in her clutches and enforce her narrative. It was during the Eras Tour stops that Swift issued a decree for fans to halt their attacks on John Mayer once and for all, and where she brought out Ice Spice to sidestep her brief new beau Matty Healy's criticism of the rapper.

It wasn't long after that concert date, in June, that Swift cut Healy loose. Her relationship with the 1975 singer was the rare occasion that her legion of loyal fans disagreed with her, so it makes sense that Swift would kick him to the curb when the winds changed their favor. Maintaining her calculated image takes a delicate balance of doing what she pleases and listening to what the fans want; the Swifties have to think they have some influence, without Swift losing a grip on her own life. After all, the last time that happened was when Kim Kardashian released an illegally taped phone call between Kanye West and Swift. It was the rare moment that another party managed to trip Swift up with her own words, a snafu that led to the making of Reputation. It makes sense that Swift would never want to revisit what she sees as her career's lowest point. Luckily, it would take an intervention of divine proportions to alter the newly minted Swifties' godly perception of her.

By the time the Eras Tour's American leg came to a close in August, Swift was practically Princess Diana levels of beloved. A new relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce was merely the next step toward achieving unimpeachable power. Kelce is the perfect combination of Swift's best boyfriends; he's got the squeaky-clean lovability of her former fiancé Joe Alwyn and the casanova qualities of Harry Styles. Naturally, Swifties love their relationship. Unnaturally, people are obsessed with them in ways that I could have never predicted. Do people still care about who celebrities are sucking face with? The last time I was concerned with who Taylor Swift was dating was during her 2012 relationship with Styles. Back then, it was still fun to watch someone cling to the fading twee aesthetic of the late 2010s, an iron grip clutching her fox sweaters and plaid skirts. I don't find any of that same novelty in watching a 34-year-old woman run around like a lovesick high schooler wearing her boyfriend's football jersey every day of the week. I'm not particularly charmed by Kelce's doting promo tour, either.

And it's not just Swift as a cultural figure that has grown tedious: Her artistic output has been consistently devolving too. It's almost as if, now that she's got the whole world in her grasp, she's phoning it in when it comes to the actual music. The vault tracks on Speak Now and 1989's rerecorded versions were massive disappointments, lacking the acoustic, confessional nature of the former and the bright-eyed charm of the latter's original sonic landscapes. These tracks, produced largely by Swift's frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, all share the same sound as the pair's most recent creations together. They may contain lyrics that Swift wrote around the period of those albums' initial release, but their production blends so seamlessly with the music of Midnights-Swift's most sonically tepid album to date-that they're all but devoid of character.

When I was 14 years old, I fell in love with that totally earnest Swift, the one who wore her heart on her sleeve and didn't give a damn what her detractors might say about her. Fearless was my introductory album, one that I played so often that, by the time she released Speak Now two years later, I nearly rear-ended someone speeding to Target after school to buy a copy. My love persisted for a few years after, until it became clear to me after the Reputation era what kind of game Swift was now interested in playing. Her career became less about the music itself, and more about how she wanted our perception of Taylor Swift the superstar to change with each new record. (Even Folklore and Evermore, two albums I mostly loved, were about positioning Swift as an artist who can pare herself back despite being the most famous person in the world.) A good pop artist is self-aware. But there's a very thin line between cognizance and self-obsession.

I do, however, appreciate the Eras Tour concert film as a sort of 2023 victory lap. There's an accessibility to The Eras Tour, one that highlights something that I find to be incredibly special about Swift's current moment, whether or not I enjoy what she's selling. It brings people, particularly young women, together and makes them feel empowered. Swift's music makes people feel seen, removing some of the weight of complicated emotions that are impossible to grapple with. People find connection with one another in that relief, and forging in-person bonds in a digital age is something of grave importance.

Lansky attempted to grapple with this phenomenon in his profile, in a line immediately following his remark about Swift "feeling canceled." "Maybe this is the real Taylor Swift effect," he writes. "She gives people who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter."

There is truth to that, no doubt. But viewing the world with an uncritical eye is a slippery slope. There's a difference between letting someone feel a certain way about themselves and challenging that perception to get to a deeper, more meaningful, and universal truth.

I genuinely ask-wouldn't it be more interesting to hear the ways that Swift responds when she is so mildly confronted with the perspective of an outsider? What if Lansky had gone ahead and put the numbers in front of her, if he had told her that, by all metrics, she was undeniably still successful even at the point she deems her career's lowest? If he reminded her that feelings and facts are two different things, but that the latter can still influence the former? Her answer may very well be the same, but at least it would be coming from the horse's mouth, instead of another person kowtowing to the fabled story of Taylor Swift that the artist herself has constructed.

How millions of people can look at a celebrity with that much unbridled control over an in-depth journalistic profile and not shudder with fear-or, at the very least, think it's a little strange that such a stalwart narrative can go unchecked-is shocking to me. These kinds of pieces should examine a celebrity's career and personality with a microscope, and they should challenge ideas to prove or disprove the notions that said celebrities want the public to believe. If we automatically accepted everything that someone said about themselves as the irrefutable truth, our world would be far closer to collapse than it already is.

Great art, and great artists, must be able to withstand scrutiny. Only then will an artist have something interesting to say. Until then, I am not convinced that Taylor Swift has any intentions other than commodifying the idea of herself just enough to connect with young people who have yet to realize that Swift is now only a part-time musician, and full-time spin doctor.

It may come as a surprise that it wasn't Taylor Swift referring to re-recording her hit albums as " collecting horcruxes and infinity stones" in her recent Time magazine Person of the Year profile that put me over the edge. (Although that kind of millennial speak also brings a twitch to my eye, even if it perfectly aligns with the perma-Tumblr brand that Swift has crafted for herself.) Rather, it was a quote from the article's scribe, Time 's West Coast editor Sam Lansky, that enraged me. Lansky's profile is a detailed and knowledgeable pop culture chronicle, but it takes little more than a single quote to reveal that the article is a Swift-approved puff piece.

Lansky says in his piece that, when Swift is speaking about her mythic journey to her current status as the untouchable queen of culture, he thinks about challenging her. "It did not always look like [a hero's journey]," he writes of the massive success of Reputation, an album Swift notes as an integral point in the arc of her redemption from tabloid target to critical darling. "She did not look like someone whose career had died... I am tempted to say this. But then I think, 'Who am I to challenge it, if that's how she felt?' The point is: She felt canceled."

Reading that should be all that anyone needs to know about the careful control that Swift has over her career and image, and the kinds of people that she not only surrounds herself with but also allows to peer into her life. She wants nothing more than to keep the narrative she has so meticulously crafted intact. This is her picture-perfect image of herself: a pop star who clawed her way back from the dregs of cultural cancelation to revive a career that, in actuality, never came close to dying. Swift seemingly let Lansky in because she could regulate the circumstances so precisely that even the most discerning part of his profile would end in the relinquished bow of a head.

While I don't think Swift should have to be defending her life every second that she's talking to a reporter, it's frightening how her cultural ubiquity has been able to entrance the world into a near-universal state of permanent praise. As someone who was a Swiftie for an entire decade of my life-now in recovery-I never thought that a person whose art I once admired so much could become insufferable. But Swift's record-breaking 2023 proved me wrong over and over again.

For as pervasive as she managed to be for nine months of the year, it's almost shocking to realize that news in Swift World was relatively quiet at the top of 2023. Swift was gearing up for her Eras Tour, which meant keeping a low profile throughout tour rehearsals and polishing up the re-recorded tracks on Speak Now (Taylor's Version) and 1989 (Taylor's Version). But by March, Swift was inescapable. The Eras Tour wasn't just a massive success; it was its own subculture. Fans made and traded friendship bracelets for the shows, speculated over which secret songs Swift would perform each night with their Swiftie-exclusive mathematical algorithms, and planned their lives out months in advance, in accordance with each stop.

The tour, an amalgamation of each of Swift's album cycles-complete with a micro-revival of each record's specific aesthetics and visual themes-was a dream come true for Swifties. It was a celebration of their love for their favorite artist, and a way for Swift to show her fans just how much their support has meant to her through the years. It was also a way to keep them in her clutches and enforce her narrative. It was during the Eras Tour stops that Swift issued a decree for fans to halt their attacks on John Mayer once and for all, and where she brought out Ice Spice to sidestep her brief new beau Matty Healy's criticism of the rapper.

It wasn't long after that concert date, in June, that Swift cut Healy loose. Her relationship with the 1975 singer was the rare occasion that her legion of loyal fans disagreed with her, so it makes sense that Swift would kick him to the curb when the winds changed their favor. Maintaining her calculated image takes a delicate balance of doing what she pleases and listening to what the fans want; the Swifties have to think they have some influence, without Swift losing a grip on her own life. After all, the last time that happened was when Kim Kardashian released an illegally taped phone call between Kanye West and Swift. It was the rare moment that another party managed to trip Swift up with her own words, a snafu that led to the making of Reputation. It makes sense that Swift would never want to revisit what she sees as her career's lowest point. Luckily, it would take an intervention of divine proportions to alter the newly minted Swifties' godly perception of her.

By the time the Eras Tour's American leg came to a close in August, Swift was practically Princess Diana levels of beloved. A new relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce was merely the next step toward achieving unimpeachable power. Kelce is the perfect combination of Swift's best boyfriends; he's got the squeaky-clean lovability of her former fiancé Joe Alwyn and the casanova qualities of Harry Styles. Naturally, Swifties love their relationship. Unnaturally, people are obsessed with them in ways that I could have never predicted. Do people still care about who celebrities are sucking face with? The last time I was concerned with who Taylor Swift was dating was during her 2012 relationship with Styles. Back then, it was still fun to watch someone cling to the fading twee aesthetic of the late 2010s, an iron grip clutching her fox sweaters and plaid skirts. I don't find any of that same novelty in watching a 34-year-old woman run around like a lovesick high schooler wearing her boyfriend's football jersey every day of the week. I'm not particularly charmed by Kelce's doting promo tour, either.

And it's not just Swift as a cultural figure that has grown tedious: Her artistic output has been consistently devolving too. It's almost as if, now that she's got the whole world in her grasp, she's phoning it in when it comes to the actual music. The vault tracks on Speak Now and 1989 's rerecorded versions were massive disappointments, lacking the acoustic, confessional nature of the former and the bright-eyed charm of the latter's original sonic landscapes. These tracks, produced largely by Swift's frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, all share the same sound as the pair's most recent creations together. They may contain lyrics that Swift wrote around the period of those albums' initial release, but their production blends so seamlessly with the music of -Swift's most sonically tepid album to date-that they're all but devoid of character.

When I was 14 years old, I fell in love with that totally earnest Swift, the one who wore her heart on her sleeve and didn't give a damn what her detractors might say about her. Fearless was my introductory album, one that I played so often that, by the time she released Speak Now two years later, I nearly rear-ended someone speeding to Target after school to buy a copy. My love persisted for a few years after, until it became clear to me after the Reputation era what kind of game Swift was now interested in playing. Her career became less about the music itself, and more about how she wanted our perception of Taylor Swift the superstar to change with each new record. (Even Folklore and Evermore, two albums I mostly loved, were about positioning Swift as an artist who can pare herself back despite being the most famous person in the world.) A good pop artist is self-aware. But there's a very thin line between cognizance and self-obsession.

I do, however, appreciate the Eras Tour concert film as a sort of 2023 victory lap. There's an accessibility to The Eras Tour, one that highlights something that I find to be incredibly special about Swift's current moment, whether or not I enjoy what she's selling. It brings people, particularly young women, together and makes them feel empowered. Swift's music makes people feel seen, removing some of the weight of complicated emotions that are impossible to grapple with. People find connection with one another in that relief, and forging in-person bonds in a digital age is something of grave importance.

Lansky attempted to grapple with this phenomenon in his profile, in a line immediately following his remark about Swift "feeling canceled." "Maybe this is the real Taylor Swift effect," he writes. "She gives people who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter."

There is truth to that, no doubt. But viewing the world with an uncritical eye is a slippery slope. There's a difference between letting someone feel a certain way about themselves and challenging that perception to get to a deeper, more meaningful, and universal truth.

I genuinely ask-wouldn't it be more interesting to hear the ways that Swift responds when she is so mildly confronted with the perspective of an outsider? What if Lansky had gone ahead and put the numbers in front of her, if he had told her that, by all metrics, she was undeniably still successful even at the point she deems her career's lowest? If he reminded her that feelings and facts are two different things, but that the latter can still influence the former? Her answer may very well be the same, but at least it would be coming from the horse's mouth, instead of another person kowtowing to the fabled story of Taylor Swift that the artist herself has constructed.

How millions of people can look at a celebrity with that much unbridled control over an in-depth journalistic profile and not shudder with fear-or, at the very least, think it's a little strange that such a stalwart narrative can go unchecked-is shocking to me. These kinds of pieces should examine a celebrity's career and personality with a microscope, and they should challenge ideas to prove or disprove the notions that said celebrities want the public to believe. If we automatically accepted everything that someone said about themselves as the irrefutable truth, our world would be far closer to collapse than it already is.

Great art, and great artists, must be able to withstand scrutiny. Only then will an artist have something interesting to say. Until then, I am not convinced that Taylor Swift has any intentions other than commodifying the idea of herself just enough to connect with young people who have yet to realize that Swift is now only a part-time musician, and full-time spin doctor.

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2023 Was the Year Taylor Swift Became Insufferable

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Swift was omnipresent in 2023. But embedded in her ascension to cultural goddess is a self-mythologizing that we're increasingly, disturbingly reluctant to challenge.

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Taylor Swift Mega Pack 2024 Magazine | Magazines | Free shipping over £20 | HMV Store

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TAYLOR SWIFT - THE MAGIC IN HER MUSIC - Cover #1

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Key Publishing's second bookazine on the Queen of Pop looks further at the phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. Recently confirmed as a billionaire, there seems to be no stopping this powerhouse of the entertainment industry and this 116-page title takes a close look at what has made her such a global megastar.

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"This kind of project always has a significant impact on the general public. In the case of Taylor Swift, this is even more evident given her international impact," shares Italian designer Alberta Ferretti, who made several flowing gowns for the 'Folklore'/'Evermore' era. "Creating the outfits for The Eras Tour has brought us concrete results, both in terms of engagement on social media - the posts related to this project have been the most successful this year - and in terms of traffic to the brand's e-commerce from users in the United States. The US market has gradually become our top market in terms of revenue, recording a growth of 34 per cent year-on-year, surpassing the Italian market."

The power of relatability

And it's not just Swift's on-stage moments driving brand heat. Alongside the tour, over the last year she's released an album, re-released previous albums ('1989' and 'Speak Now'), and entered into a high-profile romance with Super Bowl champion Travis Kelce.

Unlike pop contemporaries such as Charli XCX or Dua Lipa, who lean into fashion and a specific aesthetic, working regularly with cool, young designers or attending fashion weeks, Swift isn't necessarily known as a 'fashion girl'. Though, Swift is, arguably, seen as more relatable and approachable because of this, and her dedicated fan base still propels any label she touches. And within the numerous discussions and deep dives of Swifties (the name given for her fans) across TikTok, X and Instagram, breaking away from the expertly defined (and oftentimes controlled) fashion and beauty brand deals have made her stand out in a playing field where celebrities aim to sell big.

"Taylor Swift is single-minded - her music and the tour are her signature, and her entire focus," says Perfect Magazine founder and stylist Katie Grand. "While other artists are endorsing products and their brands, Swift is banking on the razor-sharp nucleus of music being first and foremost."

According to Launchmetrics, Swift's red carpet attendance across the awards season earlier this year generated a record-breaking MIV of $319.2 million, making her the most-mentioned celebrity figure across all six major ceremonies in 2024 (in reference to the Golden Globes, the Critics' Choice, the Emmys, the Grammys, SAGs and the Oscars).

At the 2024 Grammys alone, Swift's custom red carpet all-white Schiaparelli gown generated $6.8 million for the brand (the highest earned across the night). After 2023's edition, her all-blue sparkling Roberto Cavalli look generated close to $3 million. During her appearance at this year's Las Vegas Super Bowl, she triggered a social buzz worth over $180 million in MIV - a whopping 23 per cent share of the overall event value. Swift was on screen for less than a minute over the entirety of the event.

The Swift mastermind

Part of the reason for Swift's impact has been in the way it is incorporated into her artistic persona. The singer is notoriously famous for utilising fashion as a smart way of interacting with her fans about her next moves. Dubbed 'Easter eggs', each outfit, accessory or visual cue has a meaning that links to the future of her upcoming projects and music, urging fans to engage on microscopic levels of analysis, while keeping her fan base on their toes. "I love to communicate through Easter eggs," Swift told Entertainment Weekly. "I think the best messages are cryptic ones."

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Taylor Swift became a socioeconomic phenomenon during her sold-out Eras tour. As she begins her first London run this weekend, we examine her impact on fashion brands.

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If music is therapy who is your therapist?

Taylor Alison Swift

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Taylor Swift is known for curating an aesthetic for each album that represents a time period – or era – of her life, music and artistry. Here, learn about every era and how you can represent your favorite one.

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Grace is a graphic designer and design writer from the UK. With a background in anthropology, she worked in academia, media and design roles, before establishing her own design blog, InDesignSkills.com, and design agency, Blue Whippet Studio. Her passion is all things print, branding and color!

Taylor Swift is known for curating an aesthetic for each album that represents a time period - or era - of her life, music and artistry. Here, learn about every era and how you can represent your favorite one.

Whether you're a devoted Swiftie or simply Swiftie-curious, there's no escaping Taylor's world domination. The cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour has brought Taylormania to concert goers, and now worldwide cinema audiences, too.

A celebration of her record-breaking career, spanning 10 albums, or eras, The Eras Tour also revisits the distinct aesthetics of each era to make the live show as much of a visual feast as a musical one. In this post, we'll cover:

What Are the Aesthetics of Taylor Swift's Eras?

What are Taylor Swift's eleven eras? Each Taylor Swift album is described by the artist as an era, a period in her musical career and life defined by a specific mood and aesthetic.

From the early days of romantic country starlet to fully fledged pop princess, as well as the Joni Mitchell-esque mood curated by Swift during her lockdown album releases, folklore and evermore, Taylor is a master of chameleonic evolution, in both music and style.

Each era has its own particular aesthetic Taylor Swift expertly curated, which is realized through album artwork, promotional imagery, fashion, and music videos.

If you want to tap into Taylor Swift trends in your own designs, you'll need to brush up on the aesthetics of these eleven eras.

Consider this your ultimate guide to the aesthetics of The Eras Tour, and Taylor Swift's extraordinary two-decade career.

1. Debut Era (2006)

America's ultimate pop princess began her career as the darling of country music, making Nashville her base and releasing a self-titled debut album, Taylor Swift.

The distinctive country twang in releases such as "Teardrops On My Guitar"' and "Tim McGraw" spoke to Taylor's country roots, and this era had a rustic aesthetic to match.

Cowboy boots, signature blonde curls, and a smattering of glitter made this Taylor Swift era distinctly girly and glam.

To tap into the original Taylor Swift aesthetic, look to all-American, wholesome imagery, such as worn wood backgrounds, cow-hide prints, and obligatory boots and stetsons.

Of course, Taylor wouldn't be Taylor without a generous dusting of fashion sparkle, so liven up your rustic designs with glitter backgrounds and denim textures.

The crossover from country starlet to pop icon began with Taylor Swift's follow-up album, Fearless.

Featuring chart-topping hits "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me," Taylor brought romantic musings to the masses with a pop-infused musical style.

This era represented the start of Taylor Swift's unstoppable path to pop domination, with the aesthetic bolder and more confident.

The Fearless era aesthetic had a richer color palette, with gold and crimson red creating a romantic Medieval look across music videos and album artwork.

The country roots were still visible in glittered guitars and sweet prom dresses, but the Fearless aesthetic felt more polished and grown-up, borrowing from the imagery and styles of fairytales, folk, and Baroque.

In your own designs, romantic Medieval images and Baroque wallpaper textures will help you recreate the Fearless style.

The fairy tale for Taylor Swift continued with her third album release, Speak Now. The first album Taylor wrote on her own, this was an era of self-assertion.

Taylor's concerts became more theatrical, with fireworks and choreography, and she leaned into a strong color palette of rich purple to build glamor and mystery into her narrative.

The aesthetic of the Speak Now era is still rooted in the romance and fairy tale foundations of Fearless, but Taylor's fresh confidence was reinforced with an uber-glamorous aesthetic of purple flapper dresses and high heels on-stage, and preppy beanies and brogues off-duty.

Recreate the feminine glamor of the Speak Now era with mystical purple backgrounds, fairy tale castles, and elegant ballerina imagery.

A fan-favorite album, Red is remembered for its endless array of addictive tunes, including mega-hits such as "I Knew You Were Trouble," "22," and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

The most color-coded of all Taylor's eleven eras, Red playfully uses this strong, dominant color to give this break-up album its kick-ass character.

Perhaps Taylor's most memorable era was 1989, which cemented her status as one of the biggest celebrities on the planet.

With songs such as "Welcome to New York," "Blank Space," "Style," and "Bad Blood," it was impossible to go anywhere without hearing one of these pop hits.

Taylor's celebrity status-and the dramas played out in the media, including reported feuds with Katy Perry and Kanye West-threatened to eclipse her musical accomplishments.

However, in typical Taylor style, she breezed through awards season, taking home three Grammy awards, amid a wealth of others, for 1989.

Now living in New York, and surrounded by her "squad" of glamorous model and performer pals, Taylor Swift swapped her girl-next-door duffle coats for an uptown girl aesthetic, rocking a new sleek bob, hipster sunglasses, and multi-colored outfits.

The 1989 era aesthetic is a celebration of Taylor's grown-up life in New York, as well as the release of her first pure pop album. Pastel, cloud-strewn backgrounds, polaroid photography, and an altogether cooler, more urban aesthetic make 1989 her most hipster era yet.
License these images via Phil McCarten/UPI/Shutterstock, Caroline Cochrane, sergey causelove, Number1411, and Ryan DeBaradinis.
Following a high-profile feud with Kanye West, Taylor disappeared from the public eye, only to return with a blistering new album, Reputation.

A direct call-out to the press and performers who had threatened her public image, the Reputation era represented a complete change of direction for Taylor.

Using the snake motif to her advantage, Taylor crafted a serpentine identity around the album, with molten gold textures, bling diamonds, and newspaper collage textures combined to communicate a sense of power and strength.

To achieve a Reputation aesthetic, team Blackletter typography with metallic textures for an assertive, urban style in your designs.
License these images via Gary Day/Shutterstock, eddo, New vision, jumpingsack, NeoLeo, Seprimor, and Nataliya Turpitko.
The most gloriously girly era of Taylor Swift must have been Lover, which was a sharp departure from the dark and moody aesthetic of Reputation.

Lover was unashamedly romantic and optimistic, and was the first time Taylor waded into political issues, making known her support for the LGBTQ+ community with "You Need To Calm Down."

The Lover era aesthetic is feminine and fabulous. Pastel tie-dye, showgirl sequins, and candyfloss colors made this into Taylor's most pop era yet.

Gone was the dark lipstick and leather jackets, and in burst a shower of rainbow-tinted sequins.

In your own projects, look to pink sequin backgrounds, unicorn images, and pastel backdrops to bring fabulousness to websites, social media posts, or stationery.

After the Lover tour was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, Taylor retreated into isolation and created one of her most masterful albums as a result.

Folklore was escapist and atmospheric, edging towards indie folk. It follows the story of a love triangle between three fictional characters: James, Betty, and Augustine. The critically-acclaimed album won Taylor Swift her third Grammy award for Album of the Year.

Brimming with nostalgia, narrative and an ode to Americana, the folklore era was one of Taylor's best eras aesthetically, with accessible fashion and design taking inspiration from vintage prairie styling.

To recreate a folklore aesthetic in your projects, look to vintage wallpaper backgrounds, cozy hygge images, and cabin photography to conjure up a mood of splendid isolation.
License these images via Attitude Magazine/Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards sponsored by Ja, tommaso lizzul, Polina Raulina, Claudiu Maxim, and Chiociolla.
Only a few moths after folklore dropped, Taylor released a second related album, evermore.

With a more wintery mood than its predecessor, the evermore era is ethereal and dreamlike, blending gentle country with the indie folk traits of folklore.

In your own designs, combine snowy landscape photography with burnt earth colors and soft tactile textures, such as wool and velvet.
License these images via OfficialCharts.com/Shutterstock, V_Sot_Visual_Content, everst, Natalia Kostikova, Sternfahrer, toriy19, and jannoon028.
A reflection on 13 witching hours during her 32 years on earth, Taylor Swift's Midnights album is a reflection on love, loss, and a voicing of Millennial anxiety.

In line with the introspective mood, the Midnights era aesthetic makes a nod to nostalgic nightlife style, lifting elements from '70s disco and indie sleaze.

Deep, inky blue sets the color tone for the Midnights era, with burnt gold, copper, and metallic green providing glamorous accents.

Blue velvet and gold glitter are the textural backdrops to channel the moody aesthetic of this latest era in Taylor Swift's repertoire.

Look to hazy retro photography, polaroid templates, and inky interiors to recreate the retro feel of Midnights.

11. The Tortured Poets Department Era (2024)

In the midst of her record-shattering Eras Tour and hot on the heels of her romance with new boyfriend Travis Kelce, Swift released her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.

The album has been described as "minimalist." Some also believe the album perfectly encapsulates sounds from folklore, evermore, and Midnights

The aesthetic Taylor Swift portrays in her TTPD era is the darkest and moodiest of all her eras, referencing dark academia, gothic tragedies, and even silent film star Clara Bow. Taylor has often been spotted in dark-colored preppy miniskirts, oversized knit sweaters, and knee-high boots and loafers since the album's release.

She also often wears red lipstick and has experimented with 90s-style thin eyebrows.

Taylor Swift's Eras of Style

Aesthetics has always played a huge role in crafting a visual mood to uniquely suit Taylor's music.

Each album, or era, borrows from historical design, current design trends, and Taylor's own style phases, creating a potent mix of aesthetics and music that Swifties can't get enough of.

We can't wait to see what fresh styles Taylor's future eras will bring!

Aesthetic Taylor Swift FAQs

What is Taylor Swift's aesthetic?

Taylor Swift's aesthetic is ever-evolving, depending on which "era" she is in. Her personal aesthetic is almost entirely influenced by the sound and visual references for her most current album.

Why does Taylor Swift wear 13?

Taylor Swift wears the number thirteen because it is her lucky number.

What is Taylor Swift music style called?

Taylor Swift's music is genre-crossing, and often most closely associated with pop, country, folk, and even alternative.

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Every Aesthetic Taylor Swift Curated for Her Albums: An Explainer

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The aesthetic Taylor Swift curated for each album represents an era of her life and music. Discover every era and how to represent your fave.

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Grace is a graphic designer and design writer from the UK. With a background in anthropology, she worked in academia, media and design roles, before establishing her own design blog, InDesignSkills.com, and design agency, Blue Whippet Studio. Her passion is all things print, branding and color!

Taylor Swift is known for curating an aesthetic for each album that represents a time period - or era - of her life, music and artistry. Here, learn about every era and how you can represent your favorite one.

Whether you're a devoted Swiftie or simply Swiftie-curious, there's no escaping Taylor's world domination. The cultural phenomenon that is Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour has brought Taylormania to concert goers, and now worldwide cinema audiences, too.

A celebration of her record-breaking career, spanning 10 albums, or eras, The Eras Tour also revisits the distinct aesthetics of each era to make the live show as much of a visual feast as a musical one. In this post, we'll cover:

What Are the Aesthetics of Taylor Swift's Eras?

What are Taylor Swift's eleven eras? Each Taylor Swift album is described by the artist as an era, a period in her musical career and life defined by a specific mood and aesthetic.

From the early days of romantic country starlet to fully fledged pop princess, as well as the Joni Mitchell-esque mood curated by Swift during her lockdown album releases, folklore and evermore, Taylor is a master of chameleonic evolution, in both music and style.

Each era has its own particular aesthetic Taylor Swift expertly curated, which is realized through album artwork, promotional imagery, fashion, and music videos.

If you want to tap into Taylor Swift trends in your own designs, you'll need to brush up on the aesthetics of these eleven eras.

Consider this your ultimate guide to the aesthetics of The Eras Tour, and Taylor Swift's extraordinary two-decade career.

1. Debut Era (2006)

America's ultimate pop princess began her career as the darling of country music, making Nashville her base and releasing a self-titled debut album, Taylor Swift.

The distinctive country twang in releases such as "Teardrops On My Guitar"' and "Tim McGraw" spoke to Taylor's country roots, and this era had a rustic aesthetic to match.

Cowboy boots, signature blonde curls, and a smattering of glitter made this Taylor Swift era distinctly girly and glam.

To tap into the original Taylor Swift aesthetic, look to all-American, wholesome imagery, such as worn wood backgrounds, cow-hide prints, and obligatory boots and stetsons.

Of course, Taylor wouldn't be Taylor without a generous dusting of fashion sparkle, so liven up your rustic designs with glitter backgrounds and denim textures.

The crossover from country starlet to pop icon began with Taylor Swift's follow-up album, Fearless.

Featuring chart-topping hits "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me," Taylor brought romantic musings to the masses with a pop-infused musical style.

This era represented the start of Taylor Swift's unstoppable path to pop domination, with the aesthetic bolder and more confident.

The Fearless era aesthetic had a richer color palette, with gold and crimson red creating a romantic Medieval look across music videos and album artwork.

The country roots were still visible in glittered guitars and sweet prom dresses, but the Fearless aesthetic felt more polished and grown-up, borrowing from the imagery and styles of fairytales, folk, and Baroque.

In your own designs, romantic Medieval images and Baroque wallpaper textures will help you recreate the Fearless style.

The fairy tale for Taylor Swift continued with her third album release, Speak Now. The first album Taylor wrote on her own, this was an era of self-assertion.

Taylor's concerts became more theatrical, with fireworks and choreography, and she leaned into a strong color palette of rich purple to build glamor and mystery into her narrative.

The aesthetic of the Speak Now era is still rooted in the romance and fairy tale foundations of Fearless, but Taylor's fresh confidence was reinforced with an uber-glamorous aesthetic of purple flapper dresses and high heels on-stage, and preppy beanies and brogues off-duty.

Recreate the feminine glamor of the Speak Now era with mystical purple backgrounds, fairy tale castles, and elegant ballerina imagery.

A fan-favorite album, Red is remembered for its endless array of addictive tunes, including mega-hits such as "I Knew You Were Trouble," "22," and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

The most color-coded of all Taylor's eleven eras, Red playfully uses this strong, dominant color to give this break-up album its kick-ass character.

Perhaps Taylor's most memorable era was 1989, which cemented her status as one of the biggest celebrities on the planet.

With songs such as "Welcome to New York," "Blank Space," "Style," and "Bad Blood," it was impossible to go anywhere without hearing one of these pop hits.

Taylor's celebrity status-and the dramas played out in the media, including reported feuds with Katy Perry and Kanye West-threatened to eclipse her musical accomplishments.

However, in typical Taylor style, she breezed through awards season, taking home three Grammy awards, amid a wealth of others, for 1989.

Now living in New York, and surrounded by her "squad" of glamorous model and performer pals, Taylor Swift swapped her girl-next-door duffle coats for an uptown girl aesthetic, rocking a new sleek bob, hipster sunglasses, and multi-colored outfits.

The 1989 era aesthetic is a celebration of Taylor's grown-up life in New York, as well as the release of her first pure pop album. Pastel, cloud-strewn backgrounds, polaroid photography, and an altogether cooler, more urban aesthetic make 1989 her most hipster era yet.
License these images via Phil McCarten/UPI/Shutterstock, Caroline Cochrane, sergey causelove, Number1411, and Ryan DeBaradinis.
Following a high-profile feud with Kanye West, Taylor disappeared from the public eye, only to return with a blistering new album, Reputation.

A direct call-out to the press and performers who had threatened her public image, the Reputation era represented a complete change of direction for Taylor.

Using the snake motif to her advantage, Taylor crafted a serpentine identity around the album, with molten gold textures, bling diamonds, and newspaper collage textures combined to communicate a sense of power and strength.

To achieve a Reputation aesthetic, team Blackletter typography with metallic textures for an assertive, urban style in your designs.
License these images via Gary Day/Shutterstock, eddo, New vision, jumpingsack, NeoLeo, Seprimor, and Nataliya Turpitko.
The most gloriously girly era of Taylor Swift must have been Lover, which was a sharp departure from the dark and moody aesthetic of Reputation.

Lover was unashamedly romantic and optimistic, and was the first time Taylor waded into political issues, making known her support for the LGBTQ+ community with "You Need To Calm Down."

The Lover era aesthetic is feminine and fabulous. Pastel tie-dye, showgirl sequins, and candyfloss colors made this into Taylor's most pop era yet.

Gone was the dark lipstick and leather jackets, and in burst a shower of rainbow-tinted sequins.

In your own projects, look to pink sequin backgrounds, unicorn images, and pastel backdrops to bring fabulousness to websites, social media posts, or stationery.

After the Lover tour was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, Taylor retreated into isolation and created one of her most masterful albums as a result.

Folklore was escapist and atmospheric, edging towards indie folk. It follows the story of a love triangle between three fictional characters: James, Betty, and Augustine. The critically-acclaimed album won Taylor Swift her third Grammy award for Album of the Year.

Brimming with nostalgia, narrative and an ode to Americana, the folklore era was one of Taylor's best eras aesthetically, with accessible fashion and design taking inspiration from vintage prairie styling.

To recreate a folklore aesthetic in your projects, look to vintage wallpaper backgrounds, cozy hygge images, and cabin photography to conjure up a mood of splendid isolation.
License these images via Attitude Magazine/Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards sponsored by Ja, tommaso lizzul, Polina Raulina, Claudiu Maxim, and Chiociolla.
Only a few moths after folklore dropped, Taylor released a second related album, evermore.

With a more wintery mood than its predecessor, the evermore era is ethereal and dreamlike, blending gentle country with the indie folk traits of folklore.

In your own designs, combine snowy landscape photography with burnt earth colors and soft tactile textures, such as wool and velvet.
License these images via OfficialCharts.com/Shutterstock, V_Sot_Visual_Content, everst, Natalia Kostikova, Sternfahrer, toriy19, and jannoon028.
A reflection on 13 witching hours during her 32 years on earth, Taylor Swift's Midnights album is a reflection on love, loss, and a voicing of Millennial anxiety.

In line with the introspective mood, the Midnights era aesthetic makes a nod to nostalgic nightlife style, lifting elements from '70s disco and indie sleaze.

Deep, inky blue sets the color tone for the Midnights era, with burnt gold, copper, and metallic green providing glamorous accents.

Blue velvet and gold glitter are the textural backdrops to channel the moody aesthetic of this latest era in Taylor Swift's repertoire.

Look to hazy retro photography, polaroid templates, and inky interiors to recreate the retro feel of Midnights.

11. The Tortured Poets Department Era (2024)

In the midst of her record-shattering Eras Tour and hot on the heels of her romance with new boyfriend Travis Kelce, Swift released her eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.

The album has been described as "minimalist." Some also believe the album perfectly encapsulates sounds from folklore, evermore, and Midnights

The aesthetic Taylor Swift portrays in her TTPD era is the darkest and moodiest of all her eras, referencing dark academia, gothic tragedies, and even silent film star Clara Bow. Taylor has often been spotted in dark-colored preppy miniskirts, oversized knit sweaters, and knee-high boots and loafers since the album's release.

She also often wears red lipstick and has experimented with 90s-style thin eyebrows.

Taylor Swift's Eras of Style

Aesthetics has always played a huge role in crafting a visual mood to uniquely suit Taylor's music.

Each album, or era, borrows from historical design, current design trends, and Taylor's own style phases, creating a potent mix of aesthetics and music that Swifties can't get enough of.

We can't wait to see what fresh styles Taylor's future eras will bring!

Aesthetic Taylor Swift FAQs

What is Taylor Swift's aesthetic?

Taylor Swift's aesthetic is ever-evolving, depending on which "era" she is in. Her personal aesthetic is almost entirely influenced by the sound and visual references for her most current album.

Why does Taylor Swift wear 13?

Taylor Swift wears the number thirteen because it is her lucky number.

What is Taylor Swift music style called?

Taylor Swift's music is genre-crossing, and often most closely associated with pop, country, folk, and even alternative.

License this cover image via

Recently viewed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Every Aesthetic Taylor Swift Curated for Her Albums: An Explainer

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The aesthetic Taylor Swift curated for each album represents an era of her life and music. Discover every era and how to represent your fave.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Launched in 1999, V Magazine is a bimonthly, supersize lifestyle brand that covers the next wave in fashion, beauty, art, celebrity, and music as captured by the industry’s most important photographers. Since the debut issue, V has collaborated with all-star talent like Inez & Vinoodh, Nick Knight, Steven Klein, Me