Remember that time it took three years for Taylor Swift to release a new album and it felt like forever?
It seems like such a distant blip now, considering how prolific Swift's been since that interminable wait for 2017's reputation, first getting back on her every-two-years schedule with Lover in 2019 and then...checks notes...making three more new albums and re-recording two of her older albums.
The content's just been coming down, it's all around—and, luckily, with sound. (Plus, she also found time to write a feature-length script and is going to direct it herself in the near future, because of course.)
"I found that the more I write, the more I keep writing," Swift told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show last month, "I don't know what's been going on, but in the last six or seven years I've just been constantly making things and, the more things I make, the happier I am."
And while flooding the marketplace could backfire for some artists, Swift's burst of creativity and razor-sharp business instincts have only caused the opposite of fatigue among her devoted Swifties.
During a 12-month stretch that would've been memorable for any one milestone—becoming the first-ever Record Store Day global ambassador, receiving an honorary doctorate from NYU, marking six years with boyfriend Joe Alwyn—Swift took over the fourth quarter of 2022 with the release of her 10th studio album, Midnights (which will be eligible for the 2024 Grammys and other awards a year from now).
In just 24 hours, her latest confessional was streamed a record 228 million times on Spotify and became the top-selling album of the year, and it's since been certified double-platinum with more than 2 million units sold.
"It's a concept record but it's my first directly autobiographical album in a while," Swift explained to Fallon, noting that Album of the Year Grammy winner folklore and its follow-up evermore were from a fictional character's point of view. "I'm feeling very overwhelmed by the fans' love for the record. I'm also feeling, like, very soft and fragile. The two can exist at once."
"But the fact that the fans have done this, the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it. You know," she added with a smile, "I'm 32, so we're considered geriatric pop stars. They try to put us out to pasture at 25. I'm just happy to be here!"
And as the singer of "Fifteen" and "22" turns 33 on Dec. 13, she's turning the page on one of her most industry-influencing years yet (which is saying a lot)—one that's seen U.S. officials literally making a federal case out of how popular Swift is.
As always, the build-up to Midnights' Oct. 21 release was impeccably curated, as were Swift's subsequent press stops and her surprise appearances, such as showing up at the American Music Awards on Nov. 20 to accept her Favorite Pop Album win for Red (Taylor's Version) in person (one of six AMAs she took home that night).
"This album is a re-recorded album, and I cannot tell you how much my re-recorded albums mean to me," she said. "But I never expected or assumed that they would mean anything to you."
Swift is also nominated for four Grammys, including Song of the Year for "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)," her extended takedown of probably Jake Gyllenhaal (but who really knows for sure...) stemming from her determined do-over.
Scooter Braun—who in 2019 bought label Big Machine Records and, included in the purchase price, Swift's back catalogue—told MSNBC's Ari Melber in April that she had "every right" to re-record the songs in question and pursue regaining control of her masters, but he felt that "weaponizing a fanbase" could be dangerous.
Not least because what means anything to Swift quite often ends up meaning everything to her fans.
In fact, more than four dozen of them are suing Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation over last month's technical-difficulty-plagued rollout of ticket sales for her 2023 Eras Tour, alleging fraud, misrepresentation and antitrust violations.
Responding to the class-action lawsuit, Live Nation said in a statement posted to its website that it "takes its responsibilities under the antitrust laws seriously" and "does not engage in behaviors that could justify antitrust litigation, let alone orders that would require it to alter fundamental business practices."
Though verified fan club members were supposed to have a leg up on the competition with invite codes, it almost felt as if the shows were sold out before the Nov. 15 pre-sale even began. At least 12 million unique visitors, including automated bots, joined the fray, resulting in hours-long waits (often with nothing to show for it at the end), a crashing website and countless disgruntled aspiring audience members, though 2 million tickets were ultimately purchased in one day.
Ticketmaster announced Nov. 17 it was canceling the general public sale "due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand."
"It goes without saying that I'm extremely protective of my fans," Swift wrote in a Nov. 18 Instagram Story message. "We've been doing this for decades together and over the years, I've brought so many elements of my career in house. I've done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans' experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do."
Relaying that she thought her concertgoers were in good hands, she concluded, "It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them."
The next day Ticketmaster apologized to Swift's fans and whoever had a "terrible experience" trying to secure Era Tour tickets, vowing to "shore up [their] tech for the new bar that has been set by demand."
At the behest of Swift's team (as the message explained), Ticketmaster started reaching out Dec. 12 to fans who were registered to participate in the mid-November pre-sale to offer them an "additional opportunity" to buy Eras Tour seats.
But Live Nation and Ticketmaster aren't out of the woods yet: The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into their business practices, so the cost of superfandom (and average "Hey, I'd like to go to this concert for less than the cost of rent" fandom) may be destined for a clash on Capitol Hill.
In the meantime, Swift has been tending to her flock the best way she knows how—by keeping that content flowing.
On Dec. 8 she released a behind-the-scenes video from All Too Well: The Short Film, the Grammy-nominated video companion to her 10-minute re-recording of 2012's "All Too Well."
Swift also directed the nearly seven-minute video, starring Sadie Sink as the lovelorn heroine and Dylan O'Brien as the scarf-swiping cad who did her wrong.
"We're watching a person lose a sense of innocence and naivety, we're watching her figure out how to turn it into something beautiful," Swift said in the behind-the-scenes offering. "And in the older her, there's a stillness and a stoicism and a seriousness and a stillness but a sadness. She's fine, but she's not who we met...So it's just sort of one of those things of, like, what's lost and what's found and we're watching a person come of age."
And she's a world away from 22.