2023 Artist of the Year Taylor Swift Built the Perfect Machine with “The Eras Tour”
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The post 2023 Artist of the Year Taylor Swift Built the Perfect Machine with “The Eras Tour” appeared first on Consequence.
Our 2023 Annual Report hits a high note as we reveal Taylor Swift is our Artist of the Year. We’ll have more from our annual report, highlighting the best music, film, and television of the year, coming soon. Check it all out here.
There’s a strong chance that Taylor Swift is the most famous person on the planet. Her former New York City apartment has become a place of pilgrimage; she can’t snack at a football game without the Empire State Building lighting up in her honor. Bookies are taking bets on her possible engagement to Travis Kelce. Christ the Redeemer in Brasil, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, welcomed Swift to Rio de Janeiro by donning a projection of her shirt from the “You Belong With Me” music video.
It’s safe to say the mania of her fame reached a new peak this year.
Swift has been a part of public consciousness for a long time and in many different forms, but her place in the pop culture landscape of 2023 feels distinct. “The Eras Tour” is largely responsible for this latest ascent; the ongoing global trek reshaped how a “greatest hits” outing can look, and there was simply no hotter ticket on the concert circuit this year. In fact, by financial metrics, it’s the hottest ticket of all time, recently crossing the previously inconceivable milestone of $1 billion in ticket sales.
“The Eras Tour” made more money than the second and third most profitable outings of the year (Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen) combined. The trek isn’t even over and dates keep getting added, with the tour expected to generate another billion dollars in 2024. For reference, Michael Jackson’s 1989 “Bad” tour set a record at the time when it raked in $125 million, which adjusted for inflation would be just north of $300 million today. Swift is in entirely new territory — and that’s before you add in the record-breaking gross of the Eras Tour concert film.
The three-hour spectacle of both the live show and the movie have played to rave reviews, proving it’s never been cooler to be a Swiftie. That marks a shift in perspective that’s been interesting for longtime fans to reconcile. Of course, there are many ways to become interested in an artist, and gatekeeping just isn’t fun. However, 2020’s folklore and evermore helped some critics see Swift’s pen in a different light; more people were inclined to acknowledge Swift’s songwriting abilities than ever before, despite the fact that the biggest difference in her rootsy pandemic-era albums was one of production, not lyricism.
Taylor Swift, photo by Kevin Winter/TAS23/Getty Images
Then came the release of 2022’s Midnights, followed by the announcement of “The Eras Tour,” and suddenly people who may have once rolled their eyes at Swift wanted a spot in the stands, too. It’s an especially bittersweet moment of reconciliation for the young women who used to be belittled for their interest in Swift. It’s finally acceptable to wear her merchandise — it’s coveted, even. As her reach continues to expand beyond levels of any pop star that has ever lived, more and more people are learning what it means to be in the Swiftiverse.
“To be in Taylor’s orbit at all is like a masterclass in how to be — period,” says Gracie Abrams, who opened for Swift on a large chunk of “The Eras Tour” this year. “She’s one of one in all these ways… She’s an epic performer, an epic writer, and she’s there for the people in her life — and her fans.”
From the celebration of themed outfits to the exchange of friendship bracelets, her concerts are spaces for people — especially girls and young women — to freely embrace the specific happiness that comes with loving an artist with all your might. If there’s one thing the numbers proved in 2023, it’s that centering women in entertainment isn’t just smart, it’s necessary.
Taylor Swift, photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Like it or not, teenage girls have always been curators of cool. They drive trends, embrace and discard lingo at their leisure, and build the foundations on which fandoms like Swift’s can prosper. Swifties have grown up with her over the last decade; while there are certainly many younger fans joining the ranks, the majority of her audience was more likely to have been a teenager when “Fifteen” first came out in 2008 than when “Taylor’s Version” of the track was released in 2021. These longtime fans now have careers and disposable income to power her non-stop engine; there’s never been a better time to be in the business of Taylor Swift.
And business is booming. Swift officially entered the ranks of billionaires this year — but as her net worth grows alongside her reach, has some of her beloved relatability been sacrificed? After the wildly successful box office run of The Eras Tour concert film, it’s now being offered as a VOD rental for $19.89 — a cute play on an album name, but also a shocking price for a rental of a film that already raked in big bucks in theaters.
This month, Swift gave her first long-form interview in years as the TIME Person of the Year. It’s a congratulatory piece, but one where her characteristic intentionality with language feels slightly off-kilter. She refers to reputation, a pop record, as “goth-punk.” She also say of the infamous 2016 feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, “Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me.” It’s hard to reconcile her perception of rock bottom with the fact that her next album still went No. 1.
There’s a hyperaware self-consciousness to her voice in the interview that recalls a lyric off Midnights: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid, so I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/ To make you love me, and make it seem effortless.” Even so, it may not matter how detractors reacted to passages of the piece; the people who loved it applauded it loudly and publicly. In the end, she’s still the TIME Person of the Year, and it’s hard to argue it’s undeserved.
Swift famously broke off from Nashville-based Big Machine Records, which launched her to stardom, in favor of creating a machine of her own — and she’s succeeded. We are now more than halfway through the release of Taylor’s Versions, the undeniably interesting (and sometimes polarizing) process of Swift re-recording her masters in the interest of ownership. In a time when physical media isn’t moving off of shelves anywhere near the way it might have 15 years ago, Swift still managed to sell over 2.5 million albums between 2022’s Midnights and this year’s re-recordings of Speak Now and 1989. Those sales gave her the most No. 1 albums by a woman at 13, and set a record for most albums in the Billboard 200 Top 10 at once with five. “The Eras Tour” is the engine of the Swift Machine right now, but the revenue from the concert film, merchandise, and albums are constantly adding fuel to the fire.
“There’s something deeply infectious about watching her work and watching her go through the world,” observes Abrams. “It’s rare — it’s obviously rare — and that’s why we’re all talking about her.”
Taylor Swift, photo by John Shearer/TAS23/Getty Images
Although it’s easy to get cynical when discussing the economics, it’s almost mystical how fast such feelings wash away when truly witnessing Swift. This writer was lucky enough to be at the first big rain show of “The Eras Tour,” which included a deeply delayed start — the lightning in Nashville didn’t want to quit. When it was finally safe for the show to begin, long past Swift’s usual kickoff time, I was convinced we’d be seeing a somewhat abbreviated version of the show. Instead, the patient, drenched, packed audience experienced the full concert from top to bottom, with all the costume changes, set pieces, backup dancers, and surprise songs they were hoping for. The last notes of “Karma” didn’t ring out until the clock had already ticked past 1:30 am. Some of Swift’s instruments were reportedly ruined by the torrential downpour, but to the outside observer, there was absolutely nowhere else Swift would have rather been that night.
“The Eras Tour” is a mind-bogglingly enormous undertaking. But the energy Swift is able to cultivate onstage, and the intimacy she fosters in a space with over 70,000 attendees, is singular and remarkable.
Within that is the truth that it will never be easy to be a young woman trying to find a place in the world, but Swift’s music and career make accomplishing the wildest dreams feel more possible — even as her own identity becomes more and more mythic. In a world that tends to ridicule the ferocious love of the teenage girl, “The Eras Tour” said to keep screaming; and if Taylor Swift is going to become the stuff of legend after all, then long live the magic.
2023 Artist of the Year Taylor Swift Built the Perfect Machine with “The Eras Tour”
Mary Siroky
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