It is not at all an overstatement to say that Taylor Swift is one of, if not the most successful, pop star of all time. While many can get famous through catchy melodies and snappy lyrics, it’s another thing altogether to acquire a fanbase stretching millions of people across the globe, all invested in the life you have cultivated through your idol persona. In Taylor Swift’s case, this careful cultivation of her public image has made her over a billion dollars.
It is also not outlandish to say that the nature of Taylor Swift’s global popularity is different from that of, say, The Beatles, or Freddie Mercury, or even Marilyn Monroe. The reason for this is simply the time period Taylor Swift inhabits; fame does not exist in a vacuum. By the act of being a celebrity, one represents the culture and the time they come from, and can change it with their influence.
In the case of The Beatles, they wanted to break the mold of bands at the time with a new take on albums, and innovated recording techniques within the music itself. Lead singer of Queen, Freddie Mercury, worked to break the norms of gender and sexuality as a South Asian queer man during the peak of the AIDS epidemic, and he later died from AIDS-related bronchial pneumonia. Marilyn Monroe expressed discomfort with the way she had become a model for the “dumb blonde” archetype, something she’d challenge through her own private studies, as well as forming her own independent production company.
Taylor Swift is different. It’s difficult to pinpoint the way Taylor Swift changed modern America. Above all, Taylor Swift is a rich white woman. She had a myriad of exes, of whom she feels negatively about. These feelings become a set of songs, which join her growing list of albums. She is critically acclaimed for “breaking genres,” but she always stays in commodified pop made for the lowest common appeal factor for the largest possible audience.
None of this is to say that Taylor Swift is necessarily a bad person, or even a bad songwriter. People tend to agree; her songs are catchy. But catchy songs do not explain the phenomenon of Taylor Swift’s popularity, referring to her persona as a celebrity. Not Taylor Alison Swift, the woman who goes out and buys groceries, but Taylor Swift, the popstar.
What explains the pop star’s popularity is her being a hyperobject. A “hyperobject” is simply a term for any one “object” that’s too large for the human mind to perceive. The term was coined by Professor Timothy Morton at Rice University. Climate change, an issue on a global scale powered by decisions from corporate to individual, is an example of a hyperobject. “Culture” is a hyperobject as well, particularly those in the global West, and especially American culture. America’s influence has stretched across the globe, with both hard military power and soft cultural power. Now, events and people across the world play a role in the way modern American culture functions.
When one looks at American culture, over the last few hundred years, it has been focused on the lives of figures as symbols. Public personas portrayed by people such as Marilyn Monroe have been around since the advent of movies, and fictional characters–like Uncle Sam and Rosie the Riveter–remain enduring symbols today. With the advent of social media aiding in the mass commercialization of celebrities, it’s no wonder celebrity culture has reached a new high, becoming a hyperobject in and of itself. Every day, new people burst into the public consciousness, playing a new persona and normalizing new trends.
Taylor Swift first became mainstream with her album 1989, released in 2014, and cemented herself into stardom with her album Midnights, which was released just after the COVID-19 pandemic. Her celebrity status represents her power as a de facto figure for the kinds of people the public chooses to care about. Taylor Swift is rich, she is white, and her music career began with the help of her investment broker father. In fact, when Taylor Swift grew interested in music, her father relocated his entire company to Tennessee and used his business connections, such as his shareholder status at Big Machine Records, to promote her career. She was born into a family of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). Her music lyrics are love songs, often about heartbreak, or her current boyfriend. That is the persona of “Taylor Swift,” and those are the ideals of American culture she represents.
One aspect of American culture that Taylor Swift represents and consequently normalizes is how quickly information and culture moves. Her constant change in music genres, which notably, remain in the realm of pop, are a start, but when one factors in the sheer number of albums that Taylor Swift has released, one quickly finds that she promotes this culture of hypernovelty.
Hypernovelty refers to the speed at which consumers of information are meant to keep up. It has gotten to the point where a term like “microtrend” has become well known; a microtrend is any short-lived trend that briefly holds a consumer’s attention, then moves onto the next microtrend, then the next, and then the next. The shift to short-form videos on social media is one byproduct of a culture prioritizing instant gratification and novelty. When one is bored of the current minute long video, they scroll to the next. When a new fashion trend comes up, one turns to fast fashion brands like SHEIN to buy the clothes, then shelf it, never to be seen again.
Since Taylor Swift’s newest album, The Life of a Showgirl, was released this year, over 30 new variations of that album have come out alongside it. Her prior album released in April 2024, The Tortured Poets Department, has over 80 –there’s even a website tracking the amount.
By pumping out album after album, variation after variation, Taylor Swift contributes to the nature of hypernovelty in music. Songs have become shorter in the past few years by about 30 seconds since 2019; music too becomes hypernovel. Skip this song, wait on the next album drop, no time to savor what is already there. Next, next, next.
No matter how nonsensical it seems to us, whatever a celebrity does tends to become the new normal, especially when that celebrity is as influential as Taylor Swift.
Being a celebrity, she represents the thoughts, feelings, and ideas in the American populace, especially American femininity. In America, and the Western world at large, femininity and beauty are associated with white skin, a thin figure, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a focus on romantic pursuits, as shown on fashion runways, Barbie dolls, and in weight loss ads. All these are traits Taylor Swift has, and consequently, ideas she promotes. The “classic red lip” she sings about in 1989’s “Style” is a representation of what America wants from its women, and the physical appearance the American public wants to emulate; consumerist, bold, attractive, and feminine.
In this sense, her marriage to Travis Kelce is something of a symbol. Travis Kelce, quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, represents the idea of American masculinity, notably, only in association with Taylor Swift. Her status as a hyperobject in turn makes Kelce one too by his proximity to Swift, and thus American culture as a whole. Kelce has become the masculine ideal to aspire to; a white, strong, bearded jock.
Through her hyperobjectivity, Taylor Swift hypernormalizes the immense privilege she wields and the phenomenon of hypernovelty. However, the blame does not lie solely on Taylor Swift; a celebrity has no power in culture without their fans. Through the idealization of Swift made through modern American culture, Taylor Swift is “granted” the power of hyperobjectivity. In the original example of hyperobjects, it was described as a single object referring to millions of smaller things within it. The persona “Taylor Swift” is a single noun referring to millions of fans, sales, and all the ideals she encompasses to achieve her success.
It is not at all an overstatement to say that Taylor Swift is one of, if not the most successful, pop star of all time. While many can get famous through catchy melodies and snappy lyrics, it’s another thing altogether to acquire a fanbase stretching millions of people across the globe, all invested in the life you have cultivated through your idol persona.