Music megastar Taylor Swift tops PEOPLE's 2023 list of Most Intriguing People of the Year as her close friends, longtime collaborators and E
Taylor Swift is on top of the world and more in control than ever as she closes out her biggest year yet â which is why sheâs on the cover of PEOPLEâs 2023 Most Intriguing People of the Year issue.
Her record-shattering Eras Tour (a 3.5-hour spectacle that draws from her 10 albums and spawned a history-making concert film) helped boost Swift to billionaire status, Forbes reported in October. Rerecordings of her early albums (which she began to release after her original label head sold them to music manager Scooter Braun) have even made vinyl records popular with Gen Z: 1989 (Taylorâs Version) broke the record for the largest vinyl sales week ever in October with at least 580,000 copies sold.
And the 12-time Grammy winner remains a force in pop culture, defining friendship goals with her tightknit group of girlfriends and causing Taylor-mania in the NFL amid her new romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
After 17 years living in the spotlight, âshe knows when, where, how to promote [her work], but she also knows when, where, how to be normal and be a human just living her life,â Tim McGraw says of Swift, 33. âI think she has brilliantly navigated that line.âÂ
Raised on a Christmas tree farm near Wyomissing, Penn., by her parents Scott, then a stock broker, and Andrea, a former marketing executive, Swift relocated with her family at 14 to the Nashville area to chase her music dreams.
âShe never really stops writing songs,â says the National frontman Aaron Dessner, 47, who first began working with the star on her 2020 pandemic projects Folklore and Evermore. âIâve spent a lot of time with her, and Iâve never seen anyone wait on her. When I have stayed at her house, Taylor herself was cooking everyone breakfast and dinner. Sheâs legitimately just a very down to earth and hard-working person.â Â
For nearly two decades, Swift has reinvented herself at a Madonna-like pace, bending genres and redefining the music business with her marketing savvy.
âWe do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time theyâre 35. The female artists that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to. Or else youâre out of a job,â she said in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana. âThis is probably one of my last opportunities as an artist to grasp onto that kind of success. So as Iâm reaching 30, Iâm like, I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful.â
In the last three years, Swift has taken a hammer to that glass ceiling, shattering expectations â and blazing a path for the next generation of female artists.
âSince I was a little girl, Iâve really looked up to how fearless and how smart she is. As a performer, I look up to how sheâs able to connect with every single person in the crowd, like sheâs singing to them personally,â says her Eras Tour opener Sabrina Carpenter, 24. âShe sets such a beautiful tone, and itâs why the shows are as magical as they are. And offstage she is still a superstar, but sheâs a superstar whoâs really good at baking.â
While sheâs accomplished more in a year than anyone in the game, Swift may be even busier in 2024. Touring through next December, she has two more albums to re-release and has frequently been spotted at an N.Y.C. recording studio with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff; sheâs up for six more Grammys in February; and her feature film directorial debut based on an original script sheâs written is still in the works.
âTaylor has so many stories to tell,â says Dessner. âI think sheâll keep inventing new ways and methods of writing and keep expanding this enchanted universe of her own making that we all get to enjoy.â
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