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Can someone explain to me what makes Taylor Swift so popular? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Varyk@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] all-knight-party@kbin.run 1 points 9 months ago

Little touches and interesting artistic moves contribute to making her fans die hard and have a lot of "Taylor" to consume. In particular, she treats the reveal of information about upcoming music and projects like an ARG. Her music videos have visual symbolism or color coding that takes from her musical history and foreshadows her moves in a way that she never explicitly reveals directly.

As an example, some music video has symbolism of a clock, with fingers with painted nails replacing the clock hands, each finger's paint color corresponds to an album's color (every album of hers has a unique color that represents it in her catalog). Each finger's album color corresponds to the number on the clock that the finger is pointing at, representing the month of the year that she ended up announcing the re-release of those albums when she went through and began re releasing all of her music all over again (in order to legally own the music, these albums technically originally belonged to her production company, but since she wrote them she can re-record and re-release them to claim ownership).

This whole concept of color coded symbolism and foreshadowing happens constantly, her fans are constantly on a very deliberate easter egg hunt that pays off time and time again by rewarding the fans with new music or merch drops. And her move to re release and record her old music is at once a brilliant business move, but also a respectable artistic move, and as far as I know is the only time in history this has happened with an artist, and it is, again, her music variety and quality that lets this happen.

Lastly, through all of this she builds a huge, tight fan base who can appreciate any number of different things about her music or her personality. She writes good music at the core of it, which is the most important part. She makes strong business moves and isn't afraid to go outside the box and change genres, make puzzles for her fans, or do something unprecedented. There are a ton of reasons she is as big as she is, hopefully this summed up the important parts enough for you to understand, but there are a lot of reasons she's become the largest pop star ever, and musicians everywhere should take note of these things.

this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024

308 points (89.5% liked)

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