Taylor Swift Cannot Miss

Despite her unprecedented accolades and fame, and unlike other artists who flex their wealth, Taylor Swift stands in stark contrast. She taps into the everyday struggles of her female audience by revealing her internal struggles, whether it be relationships, self-actualization, or female anxiety. 

taylor swiftPhoto byRosa RafaelonUnsplash

However, this often masks the business savy billion-dollar industry magnet that is her brand underneath her Polaroids, catchy hooks, and heartfelt diaries. 

But to understand Taylor Swift, let’s begin with her career backstory, which began at the age of 14 when she moved to Nashville with her parents. Nashville is the epicenter of country music, which is the genre with which Taylor built her career; she signed with a record label there, but as you know, that’s not where her story stops. This gets to the first of her judgments, which begins to understand her business savvy, where she understands that talent and building your craft aren’t enough alone, but being in the right place at the right time completes the formula for success. 

But this begs the question: how did Taylor dominate the charts for almost two decades? 

The answer lies in her growth, not just in her career but as a girl into a woman, with the concept dubbed “Parellel Evolution.” Which played a large part in the commercial success of Eminem.

To break it down, there are particular stages in a girl’s development.

During her schooling, the most significant stage in a Western, or more specifically, an American girl’s life is romance and the angst and anxiety of teenage girl life, which is often highlighted by the hopes of doing something big in a future career mixed with the challenges that come along with those aspirations.

High school romance adds an extra layer of complexity to this stage of life.

Taylor’s commercial success began with building on these themes (high school romance, challenges of a teenage girl, and future dreams and aspirations) from her own personal experiences and those around her, allowing her to tap into a large, not only national but international audience; The two albums I’m referring to are Taylor Swift and Fearless. 

taylor swiftPhoto byJovan VasiljevićonUnsplash

Her albums Speak Now and Red progressed with these themes by touching on college and young adult life.

These themes include a girl's first set of heartbreaks, changing relationships (from high school to college), and the dawning of adulthood and the freedoms and burdens that come with it. 

What attaches audiences to Taylor is her ability to examine these themes in real time, as we see her growing up and personalizing what would otherwise be someone most of her audience would not be able to relate to. 

She continues these themes, touching on the challenges of post-college identity, outlook on life, and more new relationships, in her albums Blank Space and Bad Blood. 

This allowed Taylor to do something unique done by few artists: retain her day-one fans but pick up new ones as she continues new themes on new albums. By reflecting on the themes of people’s everyday lives. This is another aspect of her business-savvy understanding of the power of relatability. And one may ask, How is that possible with a billion-dollar celebrity? Within the question lies the answer.

As Taylor grew in fame and notoriety, she became an aspiration for girls and young women globally, and by becoming those two things, she rubbed shoulders with the world’s biggest entertainers and most powerful music executives. 

She went head-to-head with the likes of the notorious Kanye West and the likes of big corporations like Apple, in the process becoming an icon for 21st-century women. 

The incident with Kanye, sometimes dubbed Ye, took place at the 2009 MTV Awards, and the later rap lyrics he made about her, which I’m not going into too much detail about, humiliated her. This resonated with young women everywhere who have felt the pain of achieving something only to be “slapped in the face” with downplays on those same achievements, dubbed sexism. 

But what Taylor Swift did instead of clapping back, as is often seen with celebrities nowadays, was release her album Reputation, her diary to the world about the media’s betrayal and portrayal of women and the aspirations and curses fame can bring for women. 

taylor swiftPhoto byOmid ArminonUnsplash

By releasing an album, it not only allowed her to properly process those events but her audience as well, acting as a mirror to their own lives. Of course, in the process of becoming a hit neck-breaking speed.

The second event that built Taylor’s lore was her battle with her record label. Recall how I mentioned the beginning of Taylor Swift with her signing by a record label in Nashville; well, that same record label was sold, and when her original record label got sold, all of her publications from almost ten years automatically became the property of the new label without Taylor getting any cut of the deal or consent.

This is not unique, as it happens to artists all the time in the music industry, but what was Taylor Swift’s response?

She went on to re-record all of her published songs and albums and rerelease them against the original albums now owned by the new record label. 

By doing this, she not only multiplied the revenue made on the originals but also reinvigorated her older audiences while simultaneously reintroducing herself to new ones. 

She not only brought her record label to its knees but also got big corporations like Spotify and Apple to change their business practices when it came to artists simply by raising awareness. 

Speaking of awareness, Taylor Swift isn’t the only artist to talk about young adult life and romance; little known and yet to blow is Reez0. 

A Philly artist who recently performed in New York with songs on his catalogue like “Can’t Say No” and “You’re Mine”

If you’d like to see and hear more or check him out on tour, say no more. You can check him out on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube @Reez0. So give it a go, and who knows, you might see him at his next show!!