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News — There’s no doubt that Taylor Swift is one of the most successful musicians of all time. 

She’s the highest-earning female artist ever, and her Eras tour, which wrapped up Dec. 8, is the highest-grossing concert tour. She has won four Grammy Album of the Year Awards and 40 American Music Awards and held all 10 of the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10 positions at the same time, which no one had done before. 

Along the way, Swift has transformed how record contracts work, how songs are streamed, and how tickets are sold—and she’s influenced countless other musicians. 

But the singer-songwriter’s influence has grown beyond music. She has sparked a Senate hearing on Ticketmaster’s monopoly on the ticketing industry, and requests for more shows by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. She has shifted the fashion industry, brought hordes of new fans to football, and spawned university courses on her work. She has boosted voter turnout, and the economies of whole countries. 

“When it comes to adolescents’ famous role models, it’s Taylor Swift, and then it’s Jesus,” said Sara Johnson, associate professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. “People are really, really into her. She seems to inspire a lot of fervor.”

What’s behind Swift’s wide-ranging influence? Looking across music education, a cappella performance, media studies, child development, and feminist thought, Tufts students, alumni, and faculty break down the perfect storm that has made Taylor Swift so big for so long.

“It’s me. Hi.”

Possibly the most obvious reason that Taylor Swift’s music has taken over the airwaves is that it’s easy to listen to.

Many of her songs use the same chord progressions and similar melodies, said guitar teacher Sam Levine, A22, who called her style “middle of the road” and “risk averse.” Her lyrics tend to follow a theme-and-variation structure, starting with one idea and sticking with it till the end. 

“I think part of why she’s popular is that she doesn’t do anything that people don’t understand,” he said. 

But she’s not to be underestimated. Listen closely to her music, Levine said, and you’ll hear country hooks that get stuck in your head and musical phrases that catch your attention and keep a long song moving—for example, alternating between “front-heavy” (where a syllable is spoken on the downbeat) and “back-heavy” (where syllables come in any time after the downbeat).

Lyricists spend long hours studying and recreating her compelling songwriting devices, Levine said. “I hear my songwriting peers doing the Taylor Swift thing all the time. I find myself doing it sometimes,” Levine said. “It’s impossible to get away from.”

She’s an innovative wordsmith, said Katelyn Young, A23, who co-taught an Experimental College course called Taylor Swift Feminism. “Some of the phrases she chooses are so interesting, and really unique to her music,” Young said. “Sometimes she just gets you with that one line—and you’re like, ‘Whoa!’”

One example is “leaving like a father, running like water,” from “Cardigan,” said Aleksia Kleine, A23, who taught the Taylor Swift course along with Young. “It’s not common to find popular pop songs with such deep, intellectual lyrics,” Kleine said.

Swift is also known for fitting many words into every phrase, said Abby Sommers, A25, who co-arranged the performer’s 2010 song “Haunted” for the a cappella group the Jackson Jills. 

“That makes her songs fun to sing if you know them,” Sommers said. “And I don’t think people give her enough credit for the quality of her vocals. They’re very hard to replicate—she has incredible range, going very high and then very low very quickly.”

Stella Becir, A26, had to lower one note that was too high for her to sing in Swift’s “Don’t Blame Me,” which she co-arranged and soloed on for another a cappella group, the Amalgamates. The structure of the music gives the song a particular power, Becir said. 

“It has a very full background, and it’s a little bit dissonant. It has this whimsical, mysterious, almost gothic energy,” she said. “It’s a unique song to do because of the darkness it harnesses.”

“So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it”

People connect with Swift’s music, but also with Swift herself. She seems to speak from the heart and capture real emotions, Levine said. 

“It’s cool for people to see someone who doesn’t seem to be pretending to be anything she’s not, who’s writing songs that sound real and confessional,” he said. “Her image is just a girl with an acoustic guitar writing songs in her bed.”

Most of Swift’s songs are autobiographical, describing summertime flings, fall heartbreaks, birthday parties, and crying in cars in visual detail. Her sing-talking vocals and confidential tone invite intimacy, and her lyrics make people feel they know her.

Swift was the most-cited famous role model in a survey Johnson conducted with nearly 600 American adolescents aged 12 to 17, with Jesus coming in second, Johnson said. Young people can identify with her focus on giddy first love, hurt feelings, and struggling to figure out who you are, she said.

“Questions of identity are so prominent in adolescence. And famous character role models can be kind of a landing point—a place to start,” she said. “The people you follow are a way to indicate how you fit in, and how you stand out, and how you tell people what kind of person you are.”

This makes Swift an ideal object for what are called parasocial relationships, Johnson said. Such relationships are one-sided emotional connections that people often develop with media figures. These connections may be particularly strong with Swift, who is known for connecting directly with her fans—talking to them on social media, inviting them to watch parties, offering concert perks to longtime listeners, and reaching out to fans going through hard times.

“People can get a lot of comfort from parasocial relationships,” Johnson said. “It can be helpful for adolescents who don’t feel like those around really see and hear them.”

“She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts”

Swift is famous for being the “girl next door”—literally, in the case of the video for “You Belong With Me,” in which she and a cute neighbor boy communicate via handwritten signs from their bedroom windows. 

Besides being accessible, Swift’s vibe conveys a certain wholesomeness. “She’s so good at branding and marketing herself as approachable and sweet,” Levine said.

Swift’s lyrics are often vulnerable, well-intentioned, and optimistic, without much in the way of bad language, sexuality, or disturbing themes—which makes her a popular option for parents looking for role models for their teens, Johnson pointed out. In her earlier videos, she often wears long white dresses, sparkly ballgowns, and fairytale princess dresses, as well as clothing typically worn by children—T-shirts and sneakers, onesies, heart-shaped sunglasses, sparkles, and pink.

The purity of Swift’s image reflects today’s expectations for white femininity, said Teri Incampo, A24, who studied the topic of celebrity while earning her Ph.D. in theatre and performance studies at Tufts. 

Expectations for white femininity in turn go all the way back to 19th century Victorian standards of decorum for women’s behavior, she said. “These formalized rules still play into our society’s ideal of what it means to be a true woman,” Incampo said. “Being a good girl is based on ideas of one’s sexual experiences and reputation; being well-kempt, clean, and fashionable; and not swearing or being too loud, too out there, or outrageous.”

On top of the childish clothing in her earlier videos, Swift’s songs also position her as young, innocent, and naïve, talking about her “mama” and “daddy” and singing and dancing all night. 

Always dating and never married, as Incampo pointed out, Swift reflects a certain playful, youthful brand of femininity that has become popular in recent years (see: the Barbie movie, the resurgence of roller skates, and terms like “girl dinner.”) In other words, Swift has become the quintessential “girl.”

“I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me”

But rather than being limited by her young, innocent-seeming persona, Swift has made the girl something to celebrate—and to take seriously. “She has shown that the interests of teenage girls matter,” said Kleine. “They’re powerful and interesting and they can become really beautiful things.”

Swift has also made grown women harder to dismiss. Called too emotional, a claim leveled at women throughout history, Swift turned it back on her accusers in her song “Mad Woman” : “There’s nothing like a mad woman / What a shame she went mad / No one likes a mad woman / You made her like that.” 

“She received a lot of backlash for having big emotions and singing about them. But that’s part of what has made her super profitable and influential,” Kleine said. “I’ve learned from her that it’s powerful to sing about your feelings and make them part of your life.”

Swift has pushed back on criticism of her dating life and focus on romance in her songs “Shake it Off” and “Blank Space,” and pointed out in her song “The Man” that a male artist wouldn’t face the same kind of judgment.

She has also modeled female empowerment, successfully counter-suing a male radio DJ for a symbolic $1 after he allegedly groped her, then sued her for defamation because he lost his job after she reported the alleged incident. Swift supports women’s reproductive rights and has endorsed female candidates for political office. She famously fought and won a battle with Spotify over whether they could stream her music for free, and reclaimed ownership of her early albums by re-recording new versions after the originals were bought by music industry mogul Scooter Braun. 

“She evolved from stereotypical country songs where she was a traditional woman in love, to a badass woman taking back what’s hers,” Kleine said. “And the idea of female artists owning what they create is a powerful concept.”

“You understand the good and bad end up in the song”

In an industry known for fakeness, overproduction, moral corruption, and entitlement, Swift seems to many viewers to be genuine, straightforward, good, and hardworking. And in a field still dominated by men, Swift has amassed unusual power as a young female artist.

In other words, she’s exceptional, Incampo said—a quality Americans value and seek on a global and individual level. “And by aligning and connecting ourselves with exceptional individuals, we believe that we ourselves in some way are closer to exceptional,” Incampo said. 

That’s what drives the sociological phenomenon of hero worship. “When you’re in the mosh pit at a concert you have this emotional affect and feeling of interaction with the person onstage. And it’s powerful because in that moment you see them as some sort of aspirational figure—as a hero,” Incampo said. “Some people have that relationship with God, and some of us have it with celebrities or stars. We’re literally having a spiritual worship moment.”

Swift’s image does have a darker side. She has been criticized for calling out ex-boyfriends, feuding with fellow celebrities, and capitalizing on such spats. She has been called calculated, controlling, and disingenuous when it comes to her public image. She has been accused of pandering to her audience and prizing commercial success over artistic integrity, civic responsibility, and environmental sustainability.

Far from detracting from Swift’s fame, these criticisms and controversies form the flip side of it, Incampo said.

“When we have a collective agreement that someone is good, we want to be close to them, and feel the invitation to worship them. And then if they do something bad and the cultural sentiment shifts, we derive a ton of pleasure out of hating on them,” she said. “A huge part of celebrity feeds into these narratives and archetypes we’ve been clinging to for millennia, that there’s a good guy and a bad guy.”

But just as Swift has defied the gender and power dynamics inherent to the music industry, so too has she avoided falling from grace or fading into insignificance. 

After critics accused her of lying about a fight she had with Kanye West, she deprived them of ammo by vanishing from social media—then came back swinging in her album Reputation, lambasting critics for their hunger to tear her down. She leaned into the “bad girl” narrative with her songs “I Did Something Bad” and “Look What You Made Me Do,” and reappropriated the image of a snake—which Kanye’s supporters had compared her to—as a symbol of her power.

“She has deepened my appreciation of how she works with and against celebrity. Like Madonna, she has learned to adapt to the very fickle tastes and trends of the American public,” Incampo said. “At times, celebrity has been a machine that has chewed her up and spit her out, but then she has reinvented herself.”

“So prove to me I’m your American queen”

Swift is a hero and a villain, an underdog and an American queen, a parents’ favorite and a rebel who breaks out of every box you put her in, a country star who has branched into pop, rock, folk, soul, even rap.

“Maybe part of her prominence and enduring importance is that she appeals to a wide variety of people, and so she can meet different needs for different people,” Johnson said.

Her ability to be many things at once, and to continuously evolve into something new, has given her significant staying power. “She’s been on the radio for 20 years, dropping hit after hit,” Young said. “A ton of parents went to the Eras tour with their kids—it’s a whole multigenerational thing.”

And as Swift gains new young listeners, she never quite loses her old ones, who enjoy revisiting their youth through her music, Johnson said.

This kind of nostalgia was in particularly high demand during the social distancing phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson said, when people sought reminders of happier times. 

Those who felt isolated also used Swift and her music to connect with each other. Whether it was sharing memories of past concerts, analyzing her pandemic albums Folklore and Evermore, or singing along at an Eras show in a stadium or theater, people felt like they were part of something bigger.

“She’s bonded her fans together. I feel this sense of community with everyone who's getting excited about wearing a sparkly dress and going to the Eras tour,” Kleine said. “It’s this whole cultural moment.”

In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re old or young, male or female, country or pop. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, Democratic or Republican, celebrity-obsessed or unplugged from popular culture. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a Taylor Swift fan. Love her or hate her, you can probably talk about her—and therein may lie the true secret to Taylor Swift’s ongoing success.

“In times of high political polarization, there is more talk about celebrities, because it’s something where people can find common ground. She’s a more innocuous thing that you can bring up with people when you might be worried about what you have in common,” Johnson said. “In a time where we talk about how divided we are, she seems to be a unifying force.”