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Billboard’s Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century: No. 2 — Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift is one of our Greatest Pop Stars of the 21st Century for how she changed the sound and image of pop superstardom at the highest levels.
She dominated radio with country-pop smashes that remain classics in her discography to this day – most notably, “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me,” two top five Hot 100 hits with cinematic music videos that inspired some of the most memorable moments in her iconography — and she became the ultimate it-girl, whose face you craned your neck to see on red carpets, talk shows, magazine covers. Like Shakespearean foils crossing paths for the first time, Kanye West fatefully thrust himself into the then-19-year-old Swift’s storyline, publicly declaring at the 2009 VMAs that she actually didn’t deserve one of the countless awards she would take home that year and leaving her shellshocked on stage in a moment that would catapult her into the international news cycle for weeks to come. Breaking almost entirely away from her longtime Nashville collaborators and assembling a top 40 dream team comprised of Martin, Shellback, Ryan Tedder and newbie producer Jack Antonoff, the increasingly self-assured artist narrowed her focus on making an unabashed pop album that exploded with energy and shimmering ‘80s synths.
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