How could Taylor Swift possibly top the success of her 2023? Over the course of 12 months, the pop star completed the highest-grossing tour of all time, smashed box office records with a film of that tour, re-released her most popular album and was named Time’s Person of the Year. Last night she showed us how.
At the 66th Grammy Awards ceremony the star scooped up her 14th win, and more impressively, won the prestigious Album of the Year award for a record-breaking fourth time — previously she was tied on three best album wins with legends Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Frank Sinatra.
That’s not all. As was the case with her 2022 Video of the Year win at the MTV Video Music awards, when she announced her now Grammy Award winning album Midnights, Swift took the opportunity to plug a brand-new album: The Tortured Poets Department, which will be out April 19th.
“[The way I can celebrate] is by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the past two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19th,” she told the crowd. “It’s called The Tortured Poets Department and I’m going to go post the cover right now backstage.”
As way of an announcement on Instagram, Swift shared a black and white photo of herself lounging on top of some sheets printed with the album name, along with another picture of a file of lyrics. It has already clocked up over 12 million likes, with fans anointing it “the break-up album” following the 34-year-old’s highly publicised split with Joe Alwyn.
Social media armchair detectives have also pointed out that the album’s name might be a nod to a Whatsapp group her ex was in alongside Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott called “The Tortured Man Club.”
Since 2019, Swift has released an astounding eight albums — largely down to a dispute with her former manager Scooter Braun, which led to the singer re-recording her first six studio albums. Now, with yet another new album on the way, the European leg of the tour kicking off on 9th May and with many of new NFL beau Travis Kelce's games to cram into her calendar (she's said to be making time to support him at the Super Bowl next week), the singer is preparing for what could be her busiest year yet. Something she's seemingly done every year of her career so far...
From country singer to the heart of the music industryNowadays Swift's staggering fan figures mean she's selling out 60,000-plus capacity stadiums — though it isn't even big enough to contain her fans, as was learnt after so many of them attempted to buy her Eras Tour presale tickets that Ticketmaster cancelled the general sale — resulting in a congressional hearing about the debacle. Though Swift had humble beginnings.
She was first discovered while performing at the 90-seat Blue Café, where a scout for Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Records signed her aged 14 (to this date she is the youngest signing in the company's history). Her first of many, many accolades.
Her first single, Tim McGraw, was written in a freshman year maths class, with the country song becoming a Top 10 hit on Billboard’s country chart and fast-tracking her career in the process. She hit the ground running with follow-up chart topping singles Love Story and Tell Me Why.
By 2007, the teenager had won the Horizon Award from the Country Music Association (CMA) and the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Award for Top New Female Vocalist. At 20-years-old she won her first Grammy for Fearless, making her the youngest artist to win the prestigious Album of the Year.
Of course the achievements didn't stop: her next studio album Speak Now holds the record for Fastest Selling Digital Album by a Female Artist in the Guinness World Records. While Red was the first album to land her the top spot on the UK Album Chart.
Since 2014 Swift reintroduced herself primarily as a pop musician with her album 1989, to much critical and commercial acclaim. It spent a full first year in the Top 10 in the US, and sold 1.287 million copies in a week in November 2014. With each album from here on out she continued to break records and maintain chart-topping status.
To date Swift has a Primetime Emmy Award, 40 American Music Awards, 40 Billboard Music Awards, and 23 MTV Video Music Awards. No wonder she has three homes in LA alone — you'd need serious square footage to acommodate all those gongs.Billionaire pop star status
Last October it was reported that Taylor Swift had officially entered the exclusive billionaire entertainer club, which has current members including Jay-Z, Rihanna and Dr. Dre.
However, unlike many who earn this accolade through profitable side-hustles (take Jay-Z who earned the majority of his money through music streaming platform Tidal and alcohol brands Armand de Brignac and D’usse; or Rihanna’s beloved Fenty brand), Swift is one of the rare few to reach billionaire status purely through her music and tours.
In Swift's case she made more than $500 million from music royalties and touring alone. In fact, she made a staggering $190 million after taxes from the first leg of the Eras tour alone and another $35 million from the first two weeks of screenings of the corresponding concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
However it's not just her own pockets she's lining, her Eras tour reportedly added $4.3 billion to America's gross domestic product (the monetary value of all finished goods and services made within a country), according to Bloomberg Economics. A feat which she's set to match and more during her South America and European tour leg.
