The singer is in the midst of what is set to become the biggest tour in history while breaking box office records in cinemas
In August, Taylor Swift wrapped up the first leg of her currently successful world tour, The Eras Tour. With three-and-a-half hour shows and 44 songs, the singer generated an estimated US$ 5 billion for the US economy.
The production is so big that a movie of the concert was released in theaters around the world on October 13 – in Brazil, the film will premiere on November 3. On its opening weekend, the film grossed US$ 92.8 million at the North American box office, and US$ 123.5 million worldwide. This made Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour the biggest concert movie in the history of the region. The previous record was held by Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, which grossed US$ 99 million in 2011.
By the time the tour arrives in Brazil on November 17th, Taylor will have released her third album in twelve months: the re-recording of 1989. In 2014, the album turned out to be the pinnacle of the singer’s career so far, with several chart-topping singles, a busy personal life and a tour full of famous guests – from Mick Jagger to Kobe Bryant.
However, at the end of the era, the star saw her life turned upside down when she got into another fight with Kanye West and was “canceled” by the internet. In 2016, hashtags such as “Cobra” or “Taylor Swift’s End Party” spent days among the most talked about topics on Twitter.
From then on, the singer began the process of rebuilding her image. But how did she manage to emerge from the public hatred and become one of the most famous and successful artists today?
Reputation
The strategy started back then when Swift decided to step out of the spotlight. She stopped the tradition of releasing a new album every two years and went a year without going to any social events, appearing in the media or even being spotted by paparazzi. The singer let the matter cool down on its own while she prepared her response: a full-length album.
In November 2017, Taylor released her sixth album, Reputation, whose aesthetic, based on the color black, took advantage of the insults she had received the previous year, with the use of snakes in promotional images, music videos and costumes. It was a time when she didn’t give interviews either, based on the motto she herself had created: “There will be no explanation, only reputation”.
The work didn’t have the commercial success of its predecessor, but it did win her her biggest tour to date and was enough to put the singer back in the spotlight, with the general public recognizing how well she was able to deal with controversy and respond to criticism by focusing attention on her own work.
When the black colors of the era began to give way to the pastel tones of her next album, Lover, released in 2019, Taylor’s image was already restored: she made up with Katy Perry, for example, with whom she had been feuding since 2014, and Kanye West began to get involved in even worse controversies.
The re-recordings
While promoting Lover, Taylor found herself embroiled in another major public controversy: Scooter Braun, manager of artists such as Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato at the time, bought her old record label and, as a consequence, the rights to her first six albums.
The decision provoked a combative reaction from the singer for two reasons: firstly, she said in an open letter that she was not given the opportunity to buy the rights to the albums when she ended her contract with the label. The singer explained that she had intended to do so, but the company’s owner at the time, Scott Borchetta, wasn’t interested.
The singer also expressed her dissatisfaction with the choice of buyer. In 2016, after the fight with Kanye West, Scooter appeared in a screenshot of a video link with the rapper making fun of the singer. Taylor lamented that all the work of her 13-year career had ended up in the hands of a man who had no respect for her.
The situation generated a huge wave of empathy for the singer and also raised a warning about abusive record company contracts with young artists. Under Swift’s influence, for example, Olivia Rodrigo made a deal that makes her 100% owner of her own songs from the start of her career.
From that moment on, Taylor also gained greater recognition for her talents: she was not only being seen as a great performer full of hits, but also as a songwriter. “I should own my own songs because I wrote them on my bedroom floor when I was 15,” she said at the time.
And the fact that she is the composer of all the songs and thus owns the intellectual rights to them (the record company owns the reproduction rights) meant that Swift was able to regain control of the situation and announce that she would be re-recording her first six albums.
Fearless, Red and Speak Now have already been re-released and the date for 1989 has already been set: October 27. She is still preparing the re-recordings of her debut album, Taylor Swift, and her last album under contract with the label, Reputation. As an attraction for fans, she generated even more engagement by announcing that she would take the opportunity to release songs that had been discarded at the time of each work.
“Artists should own their own work for many reasons, but the most obvious is that the artist is the only one who really knows that project. For example, only I know the songs I wrote that almost made it onto the album. Songs that I loved, but were taken off for different reasons,” the singer explained in a statement.
In other words, even by releasing songs already known to the public, she managed to gather enough empathy and curiosity for the movement to be a success. Red (Taylor’s Version), for example, even entered the list of albums with the most plays in one day in Spotify’s history. In July this year, she had four albums in the US Top 10 at the same time.
The re-recordings also helped her connect with younger fans who didn’t see the release at the time.
Folklore and Evermore
And one of Taylor Swift’s biggest fan booms happened during the pandemic. While music releases were increasingly scarce, with artists waiting for the lockdown to pass so they could release their own music, Swift came out with a surprise album in July 2020.
Folklore had no great commercial intentions. It was completely experimental, with an indie and folk sound that the singer had never done before, but which ended up creating the imagery that people were willing to listen to and connect with during the pandemic. Here, Taylor played with the lyrics by using metaphors to talk about the loss of her old catalog and creating a fictional story of a love triangle that connected through the songs.
Social media was filled with people creating theories about which song connected to which character at each moment in the story. It also helped that she named the characters after Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ daughters: James, Inez and Betty.
Just when things were starting to die down, she returned with her second surprise album, Evermore, in December, which created the same frenzy on social media, with fan theories and connections. The buzz was so great that Tiktok even earned a new nickname among fans: Swiftok.
Once the new audience base was established, she began releasing re-recordings in April 2021. For someone who used to release a new album every two years, having six albums released in the last three years – including three unreleased ones – has certainly shaken up the industry.
The tour
The consolidation of everything came with The Eras Tour, which began in March this year. Predictions are that when the tour officially comes to an end in November 2024, it will become the most lucrative in history with revenues of US$ 1.4 billion, US$ 500 million more than Elton John’s farewell tour, which currently holds the record.
The shows allow Taylor to be seen constantly, back in the spotlight as she hasn’t been since 2016, and also helps her catalog: Cruel Summer, a song from 2019’s Lover, has been in the Top 10 of the most listened to songs in the United States for over three months.
Right now, the focus is on her new relationship with American soccer player Travis Kelce, but the rumor is that she should release another unreleased album by next year. And many fans are considering that she will make a special announcement at her last concert of 2023, which will take place here in Brazil.
Taylor Swift performs in Rio de Janeiro between November 17 and 19, and in São Paulo between November 24 and 26.