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‘She dominates our age’: how Taylor Swift became the greatest show on Earth
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
The New Yorker ’s Sinéad O’Sullivan 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. She is “your billionaire best friend ”, according to Georgia Carroll, who spoke at the recent Australian Swiftposium; a star who made her money on the back of her songwriting (not by diversifying her portfolio into drinks, makeup or NFTs) and by leveraging the obsessiveness of her fans to consume multiple formats of her output. In a time where people engage with highly individualised content on their phones, Swift’s releases, gigs and pronouncements provide mass moments as stans, lighter-touch fans and onlookers race to digest her latest output, or decode a cryptic post.
Or read this on The Guardian
