I count at least fifteen stone-cold classics in her discography. (A carpetbagger from the Pennsylvania suburbs, she became an expert code-switcher early in her career and never looked back.) And when it comes to writing instantly memorable pop songs, her only peers are a few anonymous Swedish guys, none of whom perform their own stuff. She may not have the raw vocal power of some of her competitors, but what she lacks in Mariah-level range she makes up for in versatility and personality. The passage of time hits you like a brick.Įven with the widespread critical embrace of poptimism there are still those who see Swift as just another industry widget, a Miley or Katy with the tuner set to “girl with a guitar.” If this list does anything, I hope it convinces you that, underneath all the think pieces, exes, and feuds, she is one of our era’s great singer-songwriters. Returning to them every few years, as I have since writing this list, is a strangely melancholy experience. Listen to too many and you might ache again at the nagging feeling that those stories of yours have all been a bit uneventful and drab by comparison. Which is why, whether you’re a casual listener who bops along to the radio hits, or one of those die-hards who takes her every utterance as a modern Rosetta Stone, it’s easy to feel like you know Swift on a personal level. Listen to her songs and you’ll ache at the resemblance to the most dramatic moments in your own private history. There have been wobbles, most notably in 2016-17, but on the whole she has retained a command of her star image rivaled only by Beyonce and Bowie. As a celebrity, Swift’s most remarkable gift is her ability to keep art and commerce, public life and private life, operating in lockstep.

“Like so many millennials born into the upper middle class, Swift has benefited from the demise of the concept of selling out,” Time noted in 2014. The Swift we hear on her albums is a thin-skinned, bighearted obsessive, prone to introspection, with a penchant for romantic moments huge and small. Though the sound of her music has evolved since her debut, the voice at the heart of it has stayed consistent. To chart her journey - from the country romance of her teens, to the imperial pop of her twenties, to the ambivalent ruminations of her thirties - is to follow a generation coming of age. Meaning that, for millions of listeners, she is not just another pop star she is someone they have grown up with, and who has grown up with them. Taylor Swift was born in December 1989, near the peak of the Millennial Baby Boom, and has been famous since she was 16.

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