Historical. At the Grammy Awards ceremony on Sunday February 4, Taylor Swift won the Album of the Year award for the fourth time – the crowning glory of this musical equivalent of the Oscars.

With this honor attributed to her album "Midnights", the American singer enters the pantheon of the ceremony as the artist most awarded for her albums, ahead of Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon.

“I would like to tell you that this is the best moment of my life, but I also feel happy when I finish a song,” reacted the queen of pop. "Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to do what I love so much! I'm blown away!"

The 34-year-old artist stood out against other pop stars like Lana Del Rey and Olivia Rodrigo.

Taylor Swift also won Best Pop Album. She took the opportunity to sign a marketing coup, announcing the release of a new opus on April 19, entitled “The Tortured Poets Department”.

Nearly 20 years after getting started, nothing seems to be stopping her. His “Eras Tour” is expected to garner a total of two billion dollars in revenue after having already broken the symbolic ceiling of the billion collected in 2023, a first in the history of music.

🌃 Congrats Album Of The Year winner - 'Midnights' @TaylorSwift13 #GRAMMYs pic.twitter.com/EfWKmWd77X

— Recording Academy / GRAMMYs (@RecordingAcad) February 5, 2024

With her hundreds of millions of subscribers on social networks and her base of devoted "Swifties", she can swing the scales of opinion without much effort, so much so that politicians are speculating about her potential influence on the presidential election. November American.

Person of the Year for Time magazine

“You can't live in the United States without having heard of Taylor Swift,” laughs Kristin Lieb, a specialist in pop, brands and gender issues at Emerson College. "She took every tip in a Madonna's playbook and started writing her own book. It's amazing!"

His empire is estimated to be worth more than a billion dollars. The American superstar's concert film took home more than $93 million in its first weekend this fall.

The NFL, the professional American football league, has gained legions of new fans thanks to the highly publicized love story between the singer and Travis Kelce, star of the Kansas City Chiefs. 

Since his adolescence, the artist has been used to seeing his private life exposed. 

And all the successes achieved in 2023 have earned the pop star the title of Personality of the Year by Time magazine, a title generally awarded to Volodymyr Zelensky, Martin Luther King or Greta Thunberg. Taylor Swift is that “rare character who is both the writer and the heroine of her own story,” praised the magazine.

The singer made her professional debut as a teenager, signing with Nashville record label Big Machine Records as a country artist.

Her first album, soberly called "Taylor Swift", earned her a solid base of supporters, but it was "Fearless", her second country/pop album released in 2008, which propelled her into popular culture, with titles like “Love Story” or “You Belong with Me”. In the following albums, "Speak Now" (2010) and "Red" (2012), Taylor Swift borrowed more from rock and electro influences. His fifth opus, "1989", is completely pop.

Fight to regain ownership of his recordings

The star recently explained in Time that the following years were not easy, evoking an era which had not yet called into question the treatment reserved for young famous women, scrutinized, criticized at the slightest suspicion of misstep .

His dispute with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian didn't help. “All the hyenas came running to shoot at the target,” she remembers.

Another delicate turning point, in 2018, was the moment when the star reached the end of his contract with Big Machine and joined Universal without the rights to his previous albums. She took to the public arena her fight to regain ownership of the recordings of her first six opuses after the takeover of her former record company. 

She sharply attacked her former manager Scooter Braun, founder of the company which had acquired her catalog, calling him a "manipulator" who had taken advantage of her professionally in her early days.

Taylor Swift decided to re-record the first six records, inviting the "Swifties" to listen to the "Taylor version" of her works. A bold but successful bet. She embellished the new recordings with unreleased tracks, such as a ten-minute version of "All Too Well", which brought joy to her early fans, won over new admirers, and won the admiration of the music industry.

At the same time, the artist released four new albums, "Lover", produced with producer Jack Antonoff, "Folklore", "Evermore" and "Midnights".

With AFP

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