There is no corner in the world that Taylor Alison Swift has not reached. Whether performing 3-hour long concerts, directing music videos, releasing movies, or simply being streamed on music platforms, most everyone knows who the pop star is. 2023 was a wildly successful year for the artist, and it doesn’t seem like she is slowing down anytime soon. Swift’s overly successful career has reached the point where everything happens at the right place at the right time and we need to recap.
After a year of world domination, Swift broke quite a few records. Notably the most impactful event in her career this year was her Eras Tour. Traveling state to state in the United States and hoping throughout South America, the first two legs of this tour were fiercely successful. In the US alone, Swift broke the record for the highest-grossing tour, beating Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road and U2’s 360º tour’s previous records. Elton John’s tour grossed $939.1 million with 6 million tickets sold from 2018 to 2023 with 330 tour dates. Compared to Swift who performed 56 shows from February to August earning $838.3 million (about $14 million per show). Her South America leg which concluded November 26 with a total of 10 shows, estimates around $140 million. In total this estimates Swift’s 2023 portion of the Eras Tour (66 shows) to have grossed around $978.3 million. Rolling Stones estimates Swift’s tour to earn nearly $5 billion by the time it ends in 2024 with a total of 151 shows.
All while touring, the blonde pop star managed to release two rerecorded albums. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was announced on May 5 during one of her Nashville shows. Released on July 7 the album accumulated 126.3 million first-day streams (#4 album first-day streams of 2023). Later, on the last show of the US leg in L.A., Swift announced 1989 (Taylor’s Version). When the album dropped, it racked up around 380 million first-day streams (#1 album first-day streams of 2023) and became the most first-day streamed album of all time. Taylor Swift only has two more albums to release, reputation (Taylor’s Version), and Taylor Swift (Taylor’s Version).
To the surprise of most music listeners, Taylor Swift released a concert movie. Taking form as not a documentary but quite literally an at-home concert. Only cutting three songs and additional clothing change breaks, Swift created an experience for fans to enjoy the tour from home with a run time of 168 minutes. Movie theaters went wild; with fans dressing up and standing from their seats to scream along to each song. Separate from the movie merchandise sold in theaters, the movie generated a reported $37.5 million on Friday, $32 million on Saturday, and $23.2 on Sunday (opening weekend). Now (as of December 2) the movie has rounded up a total of over $250 million from theaters surpassing the previous record, Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never film (2011) with around $73 million.
At an all-time high, fans and listeners around the world could not get enough of Swift’s variety of music options. This year alone four of Taylor Swift’s songs joined the billions club (in total she has nine songs with over 1 billion streams)! First, “Anti Hero” in late July, then “Cruel Summer” in early September, “Lover” in mid-October, and lastly “Cardigan” in mid-November. Significantly, Swift became the most streamed artist of 2023 on all music platforms (excluding SoundCloud). Since Spotify began collecting data, Swift is the first female artist to be the most streamed artist breaking Bad Bunny’s three-year streak from 2020 to 2022. Additionally, she was named Apple Music’s Artist of the Year and most streamed of 2023. Most importantly, Swift was named People’s Person of the Year, the seventh woman to earn this title.
There were a lot of music award shows this year and it felt as though Taylor Swift was nominated for just about everything. She won Artist of the Year for Apple Music, was nominated for 20 Billboard Music Awards (BBMA), and won 10; this ties her for most BBMA awards with Drake. Internationally, she won: ARIA’s Best International Artist and Danish Music Award Best International Album both for her album Midnights, as for the Gold Derby Award Swift was nominated for 11 awards and took home 8, from the Japan Gold Disc Awards she won Best Western Album (Midnights), at Los 40 Music awards Midnights won best international album, MTV Europe she won 3 awards, in China’s Tencent Music Entertainment Awards she won Best Foreign Artist, and finally reaching Czech she won Žebřík Music Awards for Foreign Female Artist of the Year. “All Too Well” was quite the hit and she is still getting awards for it. Swift won her 12th Grammy this year for Best Music Video for All Too Well: The Short Film, and Best Short Film from the Hollywood Critics Association Film Awards. She won Global Recording Artist and Global Vinyl Album (Midnights) from IFPI Awards. Nominated for nine awards, Swift won six IHeart Radio Music Awards. MTV awards were huge for Swift this year, nominated for 11 she won 9, and she also won the MTV Movie Award for Best Film Song (“Carolina”). Back to her roots, she won the Nashville Song Writers Award for “Anti-Hero.” At the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards, she won three awards. Lastly, according to Wikipedia, “As of November 2023, Swift has broken 111 Guinness World Records. She has regained or broken her own record 22 times, and 86 records remain unbroken.” This leaves Swift with groundbreaking a total of 51 awards won in 2023 alone. Here is the link if you want to check out all of her documented awards (2006-2024): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Taylor_Swift
With almost two-thirds of her tour left, more Taylor’s Versions to release, and a pen that never stops producing music, music listeners and “Swifties” around the world are definitely not ready for what Swift has to bring in 2024. Time won’t fly as we wait to see what projects this mastermind has up her sleeve. I am warning you, times like this have been a long time coming.