In truth, when pop music in 2023 comes to be considered by history, it will probably just be remembered as the Year of Taylor Swift. It’s hard to think of a moment in recent pop history when a single artist has so dominated music sales and the media alike, certainly not a pop artist 17 years and 10 albums into her career. At one juncture in July, she had 11 albums on the US chart, four of them in the Top 10, including the No 1 slot; her current Eras tour is the first in history to surpass $1bn in revenue; the accompanying movie is the highest-grossing concert film of all time.
In a feature celebrating Swift being named Time magazine’s person of the year, she was described by singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers as “bigger than Beatlemania and Thriller”. Vogue called her “a fantasy of uninterrupted American progress”. One British tabloid newspaper recently employed a “renowned celebrity psychic and wiccan priestess” to divine when Swift would be taking a break (it was unclear whether the renowned celebrity psychic was being encouraged to consult her tarot cards out of concern for the singer’s welfare or with a certain enough-already weariness).
