{"id":295,"date":"2024-06-05T01:48:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-05T01:48:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=295"},"modified":"2024-06-05T01:48:24","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T01:48:24","slug":"taylor-swift-is-a-genius-businesswoman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/taylor-swift-is-a-genius-businesswoman\/","title":{"rendered":"TAYLOR SWIFT IS A GENIUS BUSINESSWOMAN!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Taylor Swift became the greatest show on Earth<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The record-smashing singer-songwriter wields creative, commercial and celebrity power like no one before. As her billion-dollar Eras tour lands in the UK, we trace the making of the Swift universe<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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H<\/span>ow to write about the biggest, most written-about star in the world as summer 2024 approaches, and with it the arrival of Taylor Swift\u2019s Eras tour in the UK later this week? We could take cues from the normally level-headed New Yorker<\/em>. But even they recently threw up their hands and pronounced Swift as beyond review<\/a> \u2013 not because reviewers might get doxxed<\/a> by overzealous Swifties if they dare give her fewer than five stars, but because Swift\u2019s work might officially be beyond good and evil.<\/p>\n

The New Yorker<\/em>\u2019s Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Sullivan contends that Swift is operating so far outside the norm for pop that assessing her output as mere songs is futile: she has created a Marvel-style universe all her own, in which complex internal references abound and the identity of her enemies, and the 3D chess games she is playing, are pored over across the social mediasphere. Teenage girls and young women, it turns out, are not passive consumers of glittery froth, but supercharged Dylanologists crossed with ninja cryptographers, operating at an emotional pitch on the scale of Beatlemania.<\/p>\n

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Country girl: Taylor Swift wins a best country song Grammy for White Horse in 2010.<\/span> Photograph: Danny Moloshok\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Swift not only has lore, she embarks on her multi-platform art knowingly, laying a trail of Easter eggs<\/a> and numerological puzzles<\/a>. She is also, of course, beyond interview, a \u201cpost-media\u201d celebrity who does not have much use for middle-people. But in a rare 2023 exchange with <\/a>Time<\/a><\/em> magazine<\/a> (when she was named person of the year) she discussed her emotive and canny album re-recording campaign<\/a> to gain control of her masters \u2013 Taylor\u2019s Versions \u2013 being like a mythical quest. \u201cI\u2019m collecting horcruxes,\u201d Swift said, eyebrow only slightly raised. \u201cI\u2019m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf\u2019s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this universe, from news stories about her latest Swiftonomics<\/a> milestone, to fan theories shared and dissected at light-speed, to university courses and symposia, the mass of Swift exegesis is weighty. This is, yes, yet another op-ed to toss on to a vast pile, but still it remains worth examining the phenomenon of a singer-songwriter who has become far, far more than just that. Swift\u2019s fans cheer so loudly they twice registered as an earthquake on the Richter scale<\/a> in the US last year. Donald Trump allies have threatened to wage \u201choly war<\/a>\u201d against Swift if she endorses Joe Biden for the US presidency. \u201cBiggest gangsta in the music game right now,\u201d Drake recently called her.<\/p>\n

Drake considers Swift his only real competition but really, it\u2019s not even close. A number-soup of statistics, of umpteen records<\/a> broken and most-streamed this, or online reach that, supports Swift\u2019s dominance. Her Eras tour looks set to be the highest-grossing <\/a>of all time, tilting the financial tectonics of entire cities: Barclays has estimated that her shows here might be worth \u00a31bn<\/a> to the UK economy. The Swift lift is real: she has made American football, that most popular US sport, even more popular. Her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, plays for the Kansas City Chiefs; it\u2019s been calculated that Swift has generated an additional $331.5m<\/a> for the NFL between 24 September last year and 22 January this year.<\/p>\n