The Rise and Rise of Taylor Swift

There is no denying that Taylor is on top of her game at the moment. The 1989 album that is said to have been inspired by the revolutionary 80’s music scene, sold nearly 1.3 million copies in its first week! This is believed to be the most opening week units sold by any album in over 12 years. Not only that but all five of Taylor’s albums are now certified platinum.

Taylor Swift 1989 album artwork.

Taylor recently said in an interview on Good Morning America that she has been “optimistic and enthusiastic about the state of the music industry” and her fans have “proved that they’re willing to invest in music.” This was a particularly important time for Taylor’s fans to prove they were willing to pay for her music, especially as she had caused a bit of a stir in the same week that her album was released by removing her entire catalogue of music from the streaming site Spotify. 

Taylor has always had a patchy relationship with the streaming site due to the small amount artists are paid; between just $0.006 and $0.0084 per song play. But why did Taylor do this? Because she’s a greedy money-hungry artist?… as many took to Twitter to stage their outrage about. Well, in my opinion, no. She was doing a very risky thing taking her music off of Spotify, considering she was one of their most popular artists with her Shake it Off single going straight to number one on the site. She could have potentially lost a great deal of album sales for this but instead she proved she could do it alone, purely on the basis of her fans paying money – the good ol’ fashioned way.

As well as this, I like what Taylor stands for, stating in the Wall Street Journal, July this year, “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.” I agree completely with this statement and it’s not greed but simply wanting what your hard-crafted, heart-wrenching work deserves. Therefore, I think she has shown a smart business manner to her, suggesting she is more than aware of what she is doing.

Not only this but 1989 is her first album to be labelled a solely ‘pop’ album as opposed to all her other ‘country’ based albums, signifying how the twenty-four year old has been able to make this impressive creative transition.

As a last point for the road, Taylor has been criticised for her songwriting on numerous occasions, with people slamming her for only writing about ex-boyfriends. However, when questioned about this in an interview with 2Day FM Sydney she came back with a rather heated response, “Frankly, I think that’s a very sexist angle to take.” Then moving on to state how no one says that about artists; Ed Sheeran or Bruno Mars, “they’re all writing songs about their ex’s … no one raises a red flag there.” Interestingly, she has a good point. Her latest music video, directed by Joseph Kahn, for the single Blank Space shows her getting back at the media for portraying her as a “crazy serial-dater.” On Good Morning America she describes how she has taken it all in good faith, showing a humorous side of “taking back the narrative” and going “absolutely crazy with the video” to continue the joke that has been portrayed. I think this is a very clever way to react as it has been proven to work in her favour. Check out the video for Blank Space below!

So there you have it, the rise and rise of the lady of the moment. She is definitely on a roll right now and I don’t think she is going to let anything get in her way! What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, are you a Taylor fan or simply just like what she stands for? Don’t forget to check out her new album 1989 too, if you haven’t already 🙂