The Taylor Swift phenomenon

It has not happened for a long time. A pop singer from America, and a woman, making it big with authentic lyrics, innovative music and an economic boom to accompany it. She is 33. Taylor Swift, the American pop singer, has been riding the crest of the popularity wave in her country and across the borders, stretching into Latin American countries like Chile and Peru.

That she has been chosen Person of the Year for 2023 by the American newsmagazine, Time, seems incidental if you look at her popularity, the revenues her records and concerts earn, and how she helped the economy in cities she performed boom through the tickets sold to fill up the stadia, and the hotel reservations that went up of her fans flocking to the concerts in whichever city she performs. That is enormous cultural and economic power for an individual with tremendous energy, a flair for writing lyrics with a realistic note and an ironic twist – which is rare in a pop song – and young people absorbing the words along with the music.

It is the words that hold the music. And with much alacrity, universities, including the prestigious Harvard, have courses on Taylor Swift, with one of the professors comparing her lyrics to the 19th century Romantic poet William Wordsworth. It is typical American hyperbole which can be quite bizarre.

But Swift seems to hold herself without falling off the publicity perch. She knows what she is doing, especially managing the show at all the levels – re-recording her earlier songs, aligning with new music industry biggies to break the control of the old ones, making a movie of the concerts she is doing simultaneously and showing the movie to audiences and earning in turn millions of dollars in ticket-sales even as she earns $900 million through her multi-city concerts. And she had 26 billion streams on Spotify’s most popular artist.

It is not surprising that the word ‘Swiftian’ – a follower of Taylor Swift – was the runner-up in the word of 2023 for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Swift remains poised and she enjoys the moment of achievement, pinnacle of glory and she is fully aware that this does not last and she must savour it as long as it lasts. Swift told Time magazine, “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.”

Swift is a young woman with her feet on the ground. She understands the intricacies of cunning of the music industry and she negotiates it all with her eyes open. Though her songs carry irony in a large measure, she is not cynical in her worldview. She values personal relations, even with Travis Kelce, the National Football League (NFL) star, and her presence at the football match pushed up the ticket sales. She says she was there for Kelce and she means it. Such is her magical touch.

Then she is warm and sincere for her friend and fellow-pop singer Beyonce. She attends Beyonce’s concerts and she feels happy for her. It is this human touch despite her dizzying success that makes Taylor Swift stand apart, an icon, a start with values when it is easy to be caught in a daze of glitzy fame.

She is wide awake as it were, very sober in the midst of the intoxicating moments of adulation from fans. Swift is aware more than anyone else that fame is a flickering thing and that it does not last. She experienced it in her career, and the fluctuations have only steeled her nerve and it has added a strong strain of realism to her lyrics. And it is the lyrics that will make her songs long-standing