USA TODAY International Edition
A social media master
do, Swift built a massive online fanbase, one that’s swelled with each subsequent release and currently numbers in the hundreds of millions of followers.
In 10 years, Taylor Swift didn’t just become one of America’s biggest pop stars. She became the pop star of a generation.
Swift’s origin story is built around an artist who, from her first stint in Nashville, has ruthlessly pursued a version of fame that’s on her own terms. By the time she released Taylor Swift in 2006, she’d already signed with, and walked away from, a contract with RCA Records. “More and more I would just get suggestions that I ... sing other people’s songs,” Swift recounted in a 2011 60 Minutes interview. “And ... I just didn’t want to.”
So she walked, gambling instead on a brand- new indie label called Big Machine. It’s fitting that Swift’s career started with a battle over preserving her artistic image, as the decade has shown how she’s controlled the narrative around her persona‚ like spinning her breakups into song material.
She’s also spent the latter half of her career dealing with the Kanye West drama, after he bumrushed her at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. She emerged as America’s jilted sweetheart, with even President Obama jumping to her defense.
Swift isn’t alone in her PR mastery, of course — look at Beyoncé, who hasn’t given a magazine interview in years. But the ways Swift, 26, amassed her devoted following of Swifties are emblematic of her generation.
Swift understood the value of interactions as simple as liking a fan’s Instagram photo, and she understood it at the beginning of her career, interacting with her followers online in a time before label heads fully understood the power of social media.
“Swift’s career grew up alongside the advent of social media — her debut album came out three months after the launch of Twitter, two years after Facebook and at the height of MySpace,” says Lyndsey Parker, managing editor of Yahoo Music, pointing to ex- amples of Swift’s innate understanding of how to connect with listeners online.
“Her ‘ lurker campaign’ for ‘ Swiftmas,’ when she stalked fans’ social media accounts to find out what each fan really wanted and then sent them personalized gifts, was genius,” she said. “And her ‘ no its becky’ T- shirt, referencing a viral Tumblr meme, was the ultimate social media in- joke.”
But Swift’s songs are the reasons listeners connected so deeply with Swift in the first place. She has told her fans’ stories as both they, and she, grew up.
According to Tyler Conroy, who took part in the new fan- sourced biography Taylor Swift: This is Our Song, the singer helped guide him through his teenage years with her own stories of resilience. “I was kind of bullied for being different,” he said. “I found her album Fearless, and I just really connected with the words and the messaging, and since then I feel like she’s just been a big sister and best friend to me.”
Her albums are full of autobiographical stories that have grown more mature with each new album, from Speak Now’s teen enthusiasm to Red’s emotional roller coaster, through 1989, an album that saw her moving to a new city and trying on more mature relationships for size.
“I have this formula for music. If I continue to write songs about my life, and my life is always changing, then my music will always be changing,” she told USA TODAY in 2010.
Interestingly, Taylor Swift’s 10th anniversary comes at a rare shaky moment for Swift’s reputation, after a feud with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian over Famous and two less- than- graceful breakups, with musician Calvin Harris and actor Tom Hiddleston.
But if the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that Swift wouldn’t be the star she is if she succumbed to the perils of celebrity. Considering her intuitive grasp of fame, she’ll return, right when the public needs her. And with two years since 1989’ s release, perhaps it’ll be with new music.