Taylor Swift was named the 2023 Person Of The Year by Time, and Jimmy Fallon joked that it “definitely in the top 50” of all the honors she’d received that day. And it was a decent joke. But it’s also true. Forbes went ahead and listed her as the fifth-most powerful woman in the world as well. Celebrity Jeopardy! had a Swift-themed category. She has five albums in the top 10 on this week’s Billboard 200 chart, a historic feat.
So, yeah, the Time cover came out on Wednesday, December 6, but it’s old news — or just one more headline in the always-replenishing Swiftian news cycle — especially now that Pitchfork reports that Swift’s The Eras Tour is “the highest-grossing in history and the first to break the $1 billion mark,” citing Pollstar. (As a relevant aside, in late October, Bloomberg estimated Swift’s total net worth at $1.1 billion.)
“Beyond her ticket sales, Swift sold some $200 million in merch, not including the reported $250 million from the record-breaking Eras Tour concert film, according to Pollstar,” Pitchfork relayed. “Revenue data was collected between November 17, 2022, and November 15 this year.”
In the Time cover story written by Sam Lansky, Swift shared how she trained for her ongoing The Eras Tour, during which she performs a three-plus-hour set every night, as excerpted below:
“In the past, Swift jokes, she toured ‘like a frat guy.’ This time, she began training six months ahead of the first show. ‘Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,’ she said. ‘Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.’ Her gym, Dogpound, created a program for her, incorporating strength, conditioning, and weights. ‘Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,’ she says. ‘I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.’
She worked with choreographer Mandy Moore — recommended by her friend Emma Stone, who worked with Moore on La La Land — since, as Swift says, ‘Learning choreography is not my strong suit.’ With the exception of Grammy night — which was ‘hilarious,’ she says — she also stopped drinking. ‘Doing that show with a hangover,’ she says ominously. ‘I don’t want to know that world.’”
And it’s quite literally paying off.