Why the Artist of the Decade is

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Fearless World Tour, 2009.   Reputation Stadium Tour, 2018.

          It all started with a spring break trip to Nashville. You’re an eleven-year-old girl, and you’re sitting in the back of your parents’ car. You’ve been writing songs on your bedroom floor since you were four and have performed them periodically — but only in your family’s living room and, sometimes, in school talent shows. You’ve been pleading with your parents to take you to Nashville, because you know that Faith Hill and Shania Twain are both from there — so, if you move there, you can become famous too, right? After you visited Music Row over spring break, you’ve been making weekend trips from your hometown in Reading, Pennsylvania to talk to receptionists at record companies to try and convince them that you’re worth their managers’ time to set up an interview. You introduce yourself, try to come across as peppy, and hand them your CD of music you’ve been writing for the past seven years. When you’re fourteen, you finally convince your parents to move to Hendersonville, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. When you’re not busy with school work — or with your only friend, Abigail Anderson, for whom you will be a bridesmaid nearly twenty years later when you’re famous (yes, the “redhead named Abigail” from “Fifteen” is a real person) — you play your songs in restaurants and clubs. One night, a guy named Scott Borchetta from Universal Records comes up to you and tells you that he wants to give you a record deal. You’re ecstatic; however, there’s a catch. He’s leaving Universal to start a new record company: Big Machine Records. Do you take the deal, even though your chances of success with this brand new record company are extremely slim? Or do you, instead, turn down the opportunity and hope that a more recognized and accomplished group will make you an offer? You decide to take Borchetta’s deal.

          Sixteen years later, nineteen days before you turn thirty, the American Music Awards is naming you the Artist of the Decade. Do you think you made the right decision all those years ago, when Borchetta made you that offer? That’s a rhetorical question.

          So, why is Taylor Swift the Artist of the Decade? Does she really deserve the title? That’s also a rhetorical question with an affirmative reply. However, to make a more compelling argument, here’s some evidence:

1. She writes her own music. You’ve heard it before, but it’s absolutely true. Her top hits aren’t just the works of Liz Rose, Max Martin, or Jack Antonoff. While she collaborates with these writers from time to time, the majority of her music lacks a co-writer; she predominantly writes her music by herself entirely and, for any songs for which this is not the case, she does the vast majority of the writing. When critics doubted that the sudden success brought about by her 2008 album, Fearless, was truly the result of her own work, she wrote her subsequent album, Speak Now, without a single co-writer. The album became the sixteenth in the history of the United States to sell over one million copies in its first week, topping the Billboard 200 chart. To reiterate, she wrote the entirety of this album by herself; therefore, this accomplishment, among countless others that accompanied this album, was the product of no one’s talent but her own. The majority of the songs on her other six studio albums, including her hit single “Love Story,” are also songs that she has written entirely on her own. She truly is the artist of our decade, because she is unbelievably talented.

2. She has shattered more records than you can count. This section was meant to be called “She has shattered __ records,” the blank substituted with the number of records that she has broken over the past thirteen years. However, when I looked up a list of her records so that I could count all of them, it took me five full swipes on my phone to scroll all the way down. There were so many records that it was honestly way too daunting for me to count all of them, so I named this section accordingly. Moreover, since she has way too many records to even count, there’s no way I could possibly name and describe each one in this article; instead, here are just a few: Fearless is the most awarded country album in history; 1989 is the most awarded pop album in history; Speak Now is the first album ever to have charted all fourteen of its songs on the Billboard Hot 100; “Love Story” is the best-selling country song of all time; she possesses 23 AMAs — more than any other female artist in history; her song “Mean” was named by Rolling Stone the greatest country song of the century; and, lastly, she is the only artist to have ever released more than one album that sold over one million copies during its debut week — she’s released four that have accomplished this. The fact that she now holds all of these records speaks for itself in terms of prestige; it’s safe to assume that an artist who possesses these records, along with countless — literally countless — others, is worthy of the title “Artist of the Decade.”

3. She is one of the most influential people of all time. Besides being named one of the one hundred most influential people by Time Magazine and supporting the Equality Act with a petition that has reached over half a million signatures, she has influenced her fans beyond the surface level. Shawn Mendes wrote in an essay for Time 100 that “Taylor makes… anyone… feel like they can do anything. It’s so rare and so special. If there’s one thing I want to achieve in my career and life, it’s that.” Moreover, Selena Gomez wrote on her Instagram page that Swift’s second studio album, Fearless, “saved so many young [women] who felt alone… [and] [g]ave a voice to those who didn’t know they had one all along.” An artist with such an extensive scope of influence — and the willingness to use her influence to inspire others in the aforementioned ways — is truly the Artist of the Decade.

    If you haven’t caught on yet, I’m a die-hard Swiftie. I remember getting an iPod in third grade and downloading all of my favorite songs, without having any idea who the artists were. Once I started playing around with the sorting categories on iTunes, I found the category entitled “Artists.” So, I tapped it. Low and behold, the only artist on the list was Taylor Swift. So, basically, I’ve been a fan since I was five — that’s the earliest that I can recall ever hearing any of the songs that I bought on my iPod three years later (I later found out that that song was called “Mine,” from the album Speak Now. Go check it out!). I’m biased, but you can’t deny the evidence. Taylor is extremely talented and, whether you like it or not, she’s the American-Music-Awards-crowned Artist of the Decade. If you want to learn more about her career and early life, I’ve included some good sources, as well as some of the ones that I used for this article, below. And, just for the sake of fun, I added some inspirational Taylor Swift quotes below. For more of those, check out some of her incredible lyrics!

~ Alexandra Mathews ‘22

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• “Good memories can leave more of a scar on your heart than the bad ones.” 

• “Just be yourself; there is no one better.”

• “Anytime someone tells me that I can’t do something, I want to do it more.”

• “Never believe anyone who tells you that you don’t deserve what you want.”

• “Life isn’t about how to survive the storm; it’s about how to dance in the rain.”

Further Reading and Sources:

• “Taylor Swift: Road to Reputation” - Taylor Swift on YouTube

• “Q&A: Why Taylor Swift Thinks Nashville Is the Best Place on Earth” - Time Magazine

• “Achievements and Milestones of Taylor Swift” - FANDOM

• “Brendon Urie Talks Working With Taylor Swift & New Panic! at the Disco Music at BBMAs” -  Billboard

• “Taylor Swift” by Shawn Mendes - Time 100

• “#IStandWithTaylor: Stars rally for Taylor Swift in catalog feud” - Los Angeles Times

Image Sources:

• Pinterest.com

• Entertainment Weekly