Taylor Swift: Time magazine's Person of the Year

Taylor Swift's nomination as Time magazine's Person of the Year has been the crowning achievement of a stellar 2023.

The title, which has been given out every year by the magazine since 1927, was regularly bestowed upon heads of state, US presidents, and military leaders.

This isn’t the first time Swift has appeared on the cover of the Person of the Year issue; she was featured as one of the Silence Breakers who exposed sexual misconduct in 2017 after she countersued Denver radio DJ David Mueller for a symbolic $1 after he groped her, and then sued her when he was fired.

2023 has been the biggest year for the pop sensation so far, with her Eras tour on track to become the highest-grossing global tour of all time, and her concert film making over $250 million in global sales.

1989 (Taylor’s Version), her latest release in her ambitious re-recording project, earned the biggest streaming day for an album in 2023 on Spotify and became her sixth album to sell over one million first-week copies.

As an artist, Swift has built an extraordinary legacy, one comparable to all-time greats such as Madonna, Elvis, and Michael Jackson.

This year, her cultural impact has been woven into the fabric of societies across the globe. Cities, stadiums, and streets were renamed after her, and when she started dating Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce, his games saw an increase in viewership.

Colleges and universities have started to offer courses specialising in her life and her lyricism, and analysts have talked about the “Taylor effect”, with politicians from Hungary, Chile and Thailand publicly requested that she perform in their countries.

Fans in Argentina camped outside the venue for months to get a front-row spot at one of her shows, and those who couldn’t get tickets for her shows “Taylor-gated” in car parks. After Ticketmaster crashed during her ticket sales in 2022, with scalpers reselling tickets for over $22,000, the Senate held a hearing. 

Her impact is undeniable, and obviously, Time named her Person of the Year. Not since Beatlemania has a pop artist managed to grip so many people – and she’s only just getting started.