I don’t get it. Her music is sometimes catchy but otherwise unremarkable, from the songs I’ve heard. How does she break all these records and accumulate so much fame and wealth?
She’s pretty, but a lot of singer songwriters are, especially those with makeup and costume people, a support staff.
Is there something else to her that people like?
I’m confused about what makes her so apparently unique or phenomenal.
Update: there are so many things that make swift unique or phenomenal.
I’ve received tons of great answers from people that have helped me understand, like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, many factors that makes swift different and consequently more successful than her peers.
Clever lyrics, top-tier production, sharing autobiographical and emotional points in her life very directly, apparent honesty with few or no public blemishes, creating a community of fans through Easter eggs and house parties and unconventional, but always personal methods, an early start supported by wealthy parents, she keeps winning against abusers, and her music itself is popular and fun.
Those are just a few of the puzzle pieces contributed here, and a dive into this post is a pretty good explanation of many of the factors that must be contributing to her phenomenal success and recognition, that set her apart from other pop stars, even pop stars who were phenoms in their own right.
This is a very educational post, thank you to everyone who has contributed.
Don’t really see her as being massively more popular than people like Michael Jackson or Madonna at their peak. She’s like 18 years into her career at this point, like a snowball accumulating more and more fans.
Of course it helps that she had rich parents to be able to grease the wheels in the early stages of her career.
The music is alright. There’s a decent amount of it, and it’s fairly varied. It’s called pop for a reason.
Madonna has 300 million sales over her career, and Taylor Swift has 200 million sales and almost twice as many awards (from the numbers I am finding on websites) at about half her age.
As far as I can find anything, it looks like Madonna sold half as many albums by the time she was in her mid-thirties.
I’m not convinced, especially after some of the answers in this post by other commenters, that just because they’re both pop stars, their success is mutually definable or explained.