To those who pay attention to the zeitgeist, Taylor Swift is the defining person of the century, not so much an echo from the past or a harbinger of the future as the pure distillation of the present. She reflects others’ lives and identities — restless and shifting — while her own life is mediated and molded by her fans, even as it unfolds. Those fans are not just fans: they are participants.
To everyone else, she’s simply a woman who writes songs and somehow rules the world.
Rarefied group
When, in October, Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl sold more than four million copies in its first week (the biggest debut since sales tracking began in 1991), industry watchers snatched at superlatives. “The biggest moment in the sales history of the business,” said Hits Daily Double, crediting Swift’s “ability to be ubiquitous in this ultra-segmented media era.” The Financial Times placed her among a “rarefied group” of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Madonna, all artists whose commercial power reshaped popular culture.
It’s an understandable and perfectly justifiable comparison. Swift’s achievements, in purely quantitative terms, are breathtaking. Her 12th studio album has outsold everything in memory: Adele’s 25, Beyoncé’s Renaissance, Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever. Her Eras Tour has grossed more than $2 billion, the highest in history. She has turned record sales, an unfashionable metric nowadays, into a revivalist practice, with fans clasping vinyl, CDs and limited “variants” as if they were sacred objects.
But metrics alone don’t make for greatness. Taylor outsells anyone in history. In terms of cultural significance, can she hold her own with the titans of pop music? The more difficult question is whether her cultural significance belongs to another entirely different order: not alongside Elvis and Madonna, but with the likes of William Shakespeare and Pablo Picasso.
Invention and translation
Elvis Presley poured American blues music into the blender in the 1950s, and it came out pureed, its African American essence hardly discernible. Elvis added a splash of vanilla and served it up to white audiences. He still channeled enough raw energy to draw the wrath of broadcasters, many of whom accused him of corrupting America’s youth with “jungle music.” But, while he frightened adults, he electrified teenagers. And, as we know, nothing electrifies teenagers like a ban. The more stations that banned his music, the more young people wanted to hear it.
Few artists have ever embodied rebelliousness so convincingly as Elvis: his transgressive music and voluptuous on-stage presence made him unsettling. But not for long: by 1960, after two years’ service in the US Army, he returned as a domesticated entertainer, his projects safe, formulaic and designed for the mass market.
The Beatles did something similar but in another register. They not only re-defined the idea of a group — self-writing, self-performing, British — but evolved so rapidly that they seemed to anticipate every new direction of the Swinging Sixties’ imagination. They moved from the innocent peppiness of “She Loves You” in 1963 to the dreamscapes of “Tomorrow Never Knows” in 1966 to the meditative Indian-influenced “Within You Without You” of 1967. By 1970, when they announced the breakup of the band, the Beatles had expanded the meaning of pop music and helped establish it as a legitimate art form.
Michael Jackson was the first global star in the post-Civil Rights era. And, of course, he was African American. This is not quite the same as being black: for many, he wasn’t black enough. He straightened his hair, lightened his skin, dressed in designer chic and escorted (and married) white women. Aesthetically, Jackson fused the visual and musical into spectacle using the then-emerging medium of the music video.
His groundbreaking 14-minute Michael Jackson’s Thriller video was given an unheard-of global TV premiere on December 2, 1983. It didn’t just sell albums; it remade MTV, fashion and choreography. It’s also worth noting that MTV had a reputation for favoring white artists: Jackson wasn’t the first African American to appear on the channel’s playlists, but he became a regular.
So did Madonna, who, like Jackson, made a specialty of breaking taboos, in her case mostly relating to sex, gender and religion. Also like Jackson, she emerged when the video was becoming as important as the record, and hence, pop music was morphing into a new type of theater. Madonna proved expert in weaponizing the video, using visual narrative to provoke, annoy and, whenever possible, outrage as many people as possible. In the process, she challenged a culture still governed by patriarchal sensibilities. She was an original: Strategic, self-conscious and protective about her own image.
Can Taylor Swift claim a similar level of originality to Madonna or, indeed, any of the others? Probably not in content or presentation. She extends rather than creates. Her albums heave with heartache, unrequited love and breakups. Critics have accused her latest, Life of a Showgirl, of recycling melodies and even borrowing outright from earlier songs. The Guardian dismissed the album as “dull razzle-dazzle.” Her own fans have described it as regression, a product of “brand maintenance.” Lyrically, her confessions no longer catch the listener unaware, and her themes seem familiar.
Originality today may be defined less by invention than by translation: the ability to convert private feeling into public industry. Swift’s distinction is her capacity to industrialize emotional and spiritual crises while preserving the illusion of intimacy. She sings to millions, yet each listener feels personally addressed, as if a note to the self had become the basis of an entire cultural economy.
Her contemporaries Lana Del Rey, Hozier and Hayley Williams (of Paramore) all command admiration for their lyricism and emotional range. We might also add Joni Mitchell, whose career began in the 1960s, and who is revered artistically and rhapsodized over by successive generations. But while critics as well as devotees laud all these artists, none has been validated so fulsomely as Swift.
Finding a place for Swift in the canon of pop music is hardly contentious. Of course, others might nominate Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie or Prince — each pivotal in their way. Swift appears to represent something different: the fusion of authorship, entrepreneurship and emotional connection on an industrial scale, and perhaps she deserves a place in a different, altogether more magnificent canon.
Transformative
In 2015, the musician Ryan Adams recorded an homage to Swift’s 1989 and concluded: “Taylor Swift is like Shakespeare.” Within a few years, the comparison became unremarkable.
“We compare her to Shakespeare all the time,” acknowledged Elizabeth Scala, a professor at the University of Texas, where a course called The Taylor Swift Songbook analyzed her lyricism and narrative composition. Another scholar, Stephanie Burt, explored formal and thematic continuities between Swift’s songwriting and Shakespearean conventions in her Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift, noting how the emotional subtlety, wordplay and storytelling in Swift’s work demand interpretive attention in ways reminiscent of classical literature.
Adelaide Guerisoli of NSS magazine believed Swift might have taken cues from another creative torchbearer: “Pablo Picasso had long foreseen the endless lucrative potential of inserting personal stories into works of art.” Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal Music Group, also likened her to the prolific painter and sculptor: “Imagine Picasso painting something that he painted a few years ago, then re-creating it with the colors of today,” said Grainge about Swift in 2023. She decided to re-record her early music note-for-note.
As part of the Maryland Symphony Orchestra’s 2024–2025 Lecture Series, the conductor Kyle Weary explored “how both [Ludwig van Beethoven and Swift] use music to navigate the complexities of human emotion, frame stories of struggle and resolution, and inspire listeners to reimagine what’s possible.”
Swift is now a subject of serious academic study, her work treated with the critical solemnity traditionally reserved for canonical poets, playwrights and transformative artists. There is a recognition that Swift’s capacity to shape narrative, emotion and audience engagement distinguishes her not just as a pop icon, but as a figure in contemporary culture.
Now. How about in 134 years’ time? Will people still be listening to her music? I ask because I noticed a new production of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler has just opened. The play was first performed in 1891. Ibsen died in 1906, and he is one of the world’s most performed playwrights, second only to Shakespeare in terms of frequency. I’ll start my answer with another question.
Unstable or visionary?
Would the audience that attended Prague’s Teatro di Praga for the premiere of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 1787 have wondered whether they had heard the most thrilling, heart-stoppingly beautiful music ever created, and whether the gods had blessed the composer with gifts of unique brilliance? Probably not: More likely they, like today’s viewers of reality TV, were just enjoying it.
Picasso came to public attention with an exhibition of his and French artist Henri Matisse’s work at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum in 1945, when he was 64, but his unique virtuosity wasn’t recognized until 1960, 13 years before his death. Even Shakespeare was acknowledged as only one of several proficient sixteenth-century playwrights. Some even suspect the Bard took credit for the work of others who, for various reasons, wanted to avoid authorship of their plays. It was the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century who hailed him as a transcendent artist, a sentiment shared and embellished by successive generations.
Artistic brilliance is rarely acknowledged in its own time. Most artists we now recognize as great labor in obscurity, their originality so unfamiliar that contemporaries mistake it for quirkiness or lack of ability. Austrian composer Franz Schubert, who died at 31, was known mainly as a songwriter to a small circle of friends; the vast symphonic and chamber works that later secured his monumental status went largely unheard until long after his death.
Vincent Van Gogh sold almost nothing in his lifetime and was regarded as unstable rather than visionary. Beethoven, by contrast, was an exception to this tendency: He was acknowledged, debated and even revered while still alive. Even so, his audiences may not have understood the full extent of his innovation. But they recognized his stature, sensing — rightly — that they were witnessing a kind of greatness seldom granted to the living.
Had Swift (b.1989) delivered one of her songs about self-loathing and disordered eating, such as “Lavender Haze” or “You’re On Your Own Kid” in 1824 (when Beethoven’s “9th Symphony” premiered in Vienna) rather than 2022 (the actual year when her album Midnights, on which these tracks feature, was released), would there have been a response of rapture and veneration, as there was in the 21st century? Doubtful.
Greatness
Greatness is an attribution: it’s the action of ascribing a quality as a characteristic possessed by a person. As such, it’s a feature of a relationship rather than a property: if audiences recognize greatness, it becomes greatness. Shakespeare and the others are great, but not because of their innate talent — because generations of people recognized, celebrated and responded to their work as extraordinary.
Their audiences agreed, explicitly or implicitly, that the art they produced could only have been created by someone exceptional. This shared belief is precisely what conferred the status of greatness. Without the collective acknowledgment, the works might have been admired, but the creators would not have been idolized.
If greatness is an ascription rather than an innate quality, then the question of Swift’s stature becomes less about her talent and more about consensus. Shakespeare, Beethoven and Picasso endure not because their genius is self-evident, but because history has agreed upon it. They occupy the canon — that institutional space where value, once conferred, becomes permanent. The canon stabilizes reputations: within it, artists may be reinterpreted, critiqued, even periodically dethroned, but never truly ejected.
If we extend this relativistic logic to Swift, she already qualifies as great — vast audiences and critical establishments have ascribed greatness to her. The unresolved question is whether she will achieve the same permanence: whether the agreement that now sustains her brilliance will endure long enough to secure her a lasting place among the cultural immortals.
Which returns us to our earlier question: Will audiences still listen to her in the 23rd century? Ibsen’s plays are masterpieces of literary realism, exploring psyche, emotion and society, timelessly relevant subjects. Swift is known for delivering compositions on love, heartbreak and self-discovery, all universal tropes that will resonate in the future. Her lyrics are intelligent, culturally acute and reflect 21st-century moods rather than inquiries into the human condition.
So, while she commands devotion now, her work lacks the dramatic architecture that keeps masterpieces living. Ibsen’s plays in particular seem organic because they expose the moral tensions, social hypocrisies and psychological constraints that remain ordinary and recognizable across centuries; they invite reinterpretation in every era, and this is another key variable.
Successive generations adapt and modify work without losing its significance. Swift already reinterprets her own catalog: The Taylor’s Version re-recordings were new acoustic rearrangements and live variations on her hits, which show her work’s flexibility and capacity for renewal. But, unlike classic plays or symphonies, most of her songs are unlikely to be covered, adapted or even sampled for years to come, and this may limit their afterlife beyond her own performances.
Swift has already achieved greatness: We, her audience, agree on that. She can hold her own in the esteemed company of Elvis and co. And her material may well be reimagined for decades to come. But is there enough profundity and discernment to guarantee her a place in the artistic canon?
Predicting the future of music preferences is impossible. The ever-changing nature of art and entertainment makes it difficult to determine whether Taylor Swift’s music will remain popular next year, let alone in the 23rd century. And yet her colossal impact on the music industry and her ability to adapt to changing times will surely ensure her lasting popularity, though perhaps not her place in the artistic canon.
[Ellis Cashmore’s The Destruction and Creation of Michael Jackson is published by Bloomsbury.]
[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
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