Rob Sheffield, a writer for Rolling Stone, captures a lot of Taylor Swift in his short but pithy book. “Her Eras Tour is such a blockbuster it’s hard to place it into industry perspective–the revenue in 2023 was $1 billion, more than the next two biggest tours (Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen) put together. The Tortured Poets Department was not just the biggest-selling, most-streamed album, it outsold the rest of the year’s top ten combined. And five of the top ten were her albums.” (p. 3)
Take Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour for an example: Swift played 149 shows across five continents and 51 cities worldwide. The tour sold 10,168,008 tickets with an average of 68,241 tickets per show. The proceeds from those tickets were more than the 2024 GDPs of 18 small countries!
Taylor Swift economic effects can be staggering. Attendees to a Swift Concert spent over $10 million in the city that hosted the concert. “In 2017, the Washington Post ran a high-profile article with at the headline ‘The Death of the Electric Guitar.’ Gibson and Fender were both in debt, so was Guitar Center, to the tune of $1.6 billion…. ‘Starting in 2010,’ the Post reported, the industry witnessed a milestone that would have been unthinkable during the hair-metal era: Acoustic models began to outsell electric.'” (p. 64-65)
And who fueled this radical change? Taylor Swift. Suddenly millions of young girls started taking guitar lessons. “Andy Mooney, the CEO of Fender, called Swift ‘the most influential guitarist of recent years.’ ” (p. 65). While sales of acoustic guitars remained strong, electric guitar sales rebounded during the Pandemic.
As a former Business professor, I’m amazed that Taylor Swift–after being cheated by her first recording company–decided to take control of her music and her songs by RE-RECORDING them! Everyone in the recording industry thought Swift was crazy and the re-recorded albums would bomb. Instead, the albums–identified with Taylor’s Version in the title–sold millions of copies and outsold the original recordings. Taylor Swift is The Beatles of this generation! GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Once upon a time, a few mistakes ago : a very fast timeline — x
- Prelude: Our song is a slamming screen door — xv
- Planet Taylor : nice to meet you, where you been — 1
- I love you, it’s ruining my life — 13
- A portrait of the artist as a young, loud, and not-especially-great-at-calming-down woman — 20
- Early days : please picture me in the trees — 25
- Track five : the ballad of “all too well” — 31
- The fangirl — 42
- Fearless — 47
- Everybody loves petty; everybody loves cool –50
- The songs on her arms — 56
- “Enchanted” — 60
- Every guitar-string scar on her hand — 63
- “The Archer” — 67
- The bridge : thirteen songs from Taylor’s dreams — 72
- Red — 87
- There once was a girl known by everyone and no one : Taylor’s codes –90
- 1989 — 99
- The word “nice” — 105
- “New romantics” — 109
- The Villain Era — 116
- Reputation — 128
- Taylor’s Version (Taylor’s version) — 136
- “Cruel summer” — 144
- The lead single — 147
- I’m not asleep, my mind is a alive : Lover — 150
- Folklore — 154
- “Mirrorball” — 160
- “Marjorie” — 163
- “Right where you left me” — 167
- Midnights
- Finale: Forevermore — 174
- Acknowledgments — 181
