Inside Taylor Swift’s Latest Unbelievable Year

As Taylor Swift celebrates another trip around the sun, a look at yet another industry-altering year for the Midnights artist.

Remember that time it took three years for Taylor Swift to release a new album and it felt like forever?

It seems like such a distant blip now, considering how prolific Swift’s been since that interminable wait for 2017’s reputation, first getting back on her every-two-years schedule with Lover in 2019 and then…checks notes…making three more new albums and re-recording two of her older albums.

The content’s just been coming down, it’s all around—and, luckily, with sound. (Plus, she also found time to write a feature-length script and is going to direct it herself in the near future, because of course.)

“I found that the more I write, the more I keep writing,” Swift told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show last month, “I don’t know what’s been going on, but in the last six or seven years I’ve just been constantly making things and, the more things I make, the happier I am.”

And while flooding the marketplace could backfire for some artists, Swift’s burst of creativity and razor-sharp business instincts have only caused the opposite of fatigue among her devoted Swifties.

During a 12-month stretch that would’ve been memorable for any one milestone—becoming the first-ever Record Store Day global ambᴀssador, receiving an honorary doctorate from NYU, marking six years with boyfriend Joe Alwyn—Swift took over the fourth quarter of 2022 with the release of her 10th studio album, Midnights (which will be eligible for the 2024 Grammys and other awards a year from now).

In just 24 hours, her latest confessional was streamed a record 228 million times on Spotify and became the top-selling album of the year, and it’s since been certified double-platinum with more than 2 million units sold.

“It’s a concept record but it’s my first directly autobiographical album in a while,” Swift explained to Fallon, noting that Album of the Year Grammy winner folklore and its follow-up evermore were from a fictional character’s point of view. “I’m feeling very overwhelmed by the fans’ love for the record. I’m also feeling, like, very soft and fragile. The two can exist at once.”

“But the fact that the fans have done this, the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it. You know,” she added with a smile, “I’m 32, so we’re considered geriatric pop stars. They try to put us out to pasture at 25. I’m just happy to be here!”