Taylor Swift named TIME magazine’s Person of the Year 2023: “It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33”

Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has been named TIME magazine’s Person of the Year 2023. The announcement as assessed by the editors about the individuals who “shaped the headlines over the previous 12 months, for better or for worse.”

In conversation with the magazine, Taylor talks about the narrative and the public opinion about her. “I’ve been raised up and down the flagpole of public opinion so many times in the last 20 years,” she said. “I’ve been given a tiara, then had it taken away.” She said, “It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33. And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that.”

Regarded as one of the biggest entertainers in the world, Taylor Swift has been in the limelight since she was a teenager. She has also built a huge empire worth over $1 billion. She knows she has to continue innovating herself though all of her albums have been making waves since the beginning of her career. Even her versions of her re-released albums, her sold-out world tour and her tour movie in cinemas have been major talk of the town in the past year. “In the ’90s and ’00s, it seems like the music industry just said: ‘OK, let’s take a bunch of teenagers, throw them into a fire, and watch what happens. By the time they’ve accumulated enough wisdom to do their job effectively, we’ll find new teenagers’,” she told the magazine.