Taylor Swift has been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The 33-year-old pop megastar, whose massive 66-date tour earned her billionaire status this year, beat Vladimir Putin, Barbie, King Charles and Sam Altman, among others shortlisted for the honor.
Last year, it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the ‘Spirit of Ukraine’ that topped the rankings, after dominating headlines since Russia’s invasion. ‘This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been… It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33,’ Swift said in an interview for the cover of the magazine in which she’s described as a ‘master storyteller of the modern era.’ Swift’s year included the wildly popular Eras Tour and concert movie, the release of her reimagined ‘1989’ album, and her closely watched relationship with tight end Travis Kelce. She’s even the subject of college courses. Swift spoke of her relationship Kelce for the first time publicly, sharing it started with a comment on the podcast the football star shares with his brother. This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. We started hanging out right after that,’ the singer said, adding that their infamous first public outing at a game was not their first date. She explained: ‘I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.’
The 12-time Grammy Award winner also acknowledged the attention she has gotten when she attends his games with the Kansas City chiefs. ‘I’m just there to support Travis. I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and p****** off a few dads, Brads, and Chads,’ she told TIME. ‘When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care.’ Swift told the magazine of the intense training she undertook to prepare for her Eras tour, which is set to be the biggest of all time. The star said she began training six months before the shows, running on the treadmill every day while singing the entire setlist out loud. That was followed by three months of dance lessons. Time Magazine notes the huge impact the Eras tour had in the nation’s economy, culture and even politics this year, saying of Swift: ‘Carrying an economy on your back is a lot for one person.’ Swift ‘achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force,’ TIME said of why they chose her as Person of The Year – a selection predicted by DailyMail.com. But the star told the magazine she believes her rise to the top came after she was almost ‘cancelled’ after Kim Kardashian shared a video that appeared to show her approving Kanye West’s song where he claims, ‘I made that b**** famous.’ – despite Swift’s insistence that she had not.
‘Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me,’ Swift said of the backlash that followed, which saw many call her a ‘snake’ – imagery she would then use for her comeback album Reputation. Swift continued: ‘You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. ‘That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.’ However, Swift told the magazine she has since then taken a different approach to her life in the public eye. She added: ‘Yes, if I go out to dinner, there’s going to be a whole chaotic situation outside the restaurant. But I still want to go to dinner with my friends. ‘Life is short. Have adventures. Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back. I’m more trusting now than I was six years ago.’ Explaining the magazine’s choice, TIME’s editor in chief Sam Jacobs wrote said: ‘The person chosen has typically been a ruler over traditional domains of power…very often a politician or a titan of industry. ‘And yet the person whose singular influence was revealed throughout 2023 has held none of these roles—or anything remotely similar…Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light…Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.’ Meanwhile Swift reacted to the honor of Person of The Year on X, sharing one of three covers that shows her with one of her equally-famous cats, Benjamin Button. She wrote: ‘Time Magazine: We’d like to name you Person of the Yea- ‘Me: Can I bring my cat.’
