NEW YORK – Time magazine named American pop icon Taylor Swift as its Person of the Year on Dec 6, calling the musical force of nature the “hero of her own story”.

“Picking one person who represents the eight billion people on the planet is no easy task. We picked a choice that represents joy. Someone who’s bringing light to the world,” Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs said on NBC’s Today show on Dec 6. “She was like weather, she was everywhere.”

“Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light,” he added. “Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.”

The huge US$92.8 million (S$124 million) opening earlier in 2023 of Swift’s The Eras Tour film set the tone for the singer’s year.

Advance ticket sales for the movie topped US$100 million worldwide, theatre operator AMC said, making it the best-selling feature-length concert film in history.

In 2023, Swift’s blossoming romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has also brought the US National Football League a new wave of fans, as her hundreds of millions of social media followers checked out her new squeeze.

“For building a world of her own that made a place for so many, for spinning her story into a global legend, for bringing joy to a society desperately in need of it, Taylor Swift is Time’s 2023 Person of the Year,” Mr Jacobs said.

‘Mainstream sensation’

Swift beat out eight other finalists announced on NBC’s Today show, including King Charles III and Barbie.

“Swift’s accomplishments as an artist – culturally, critically and commercially – are so legion that to recount them seems almost beside the point,” the magazine wrote.

The Eras tour has more than 145 dates.

According to Pollstar, the industry magazine covering the performing arts, each concert generates US$13 million in revenue, which would bring the tour total to around US$1.9 billion.

No artist or group has previously crossed the symbolic billion-dollar threshold.

Swift’s defining tool has proved to be social media, through which she regularly interacts with fans.

Born in Pennsylvania, Swift started writing country songs on guitar in her early teens.

Her father shifted his job in financial services to the country music capital of Nashville to give her a shot in the industry.

After winning a growing mainstream audience for her introspective country songs, Swift switched to a pop direction for her fifth studio album – 1989, named after her year of birth.

“What makes Swift a cultural phenomenon is not only her musical prowess and versatility, but also the trademark authenticity she puts on each note and verse,” Forbes magazine said in an article published in October.

Time awards the title to “the individual, group, or concept that has had the most influence on the world throughout the previous 12 months”.

Launched as a marketing gimmick in the 1920s, the award has continued to drive fanfare as weekly print magazines struggle to remain relevant.

The past few years

In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the magazine awarded the distinction to Mr Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s President, and the “spirit of Ukraine”.

The magazine named Mr Elon Musk person of the year in 2021. “With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons,” the magazine wrote at the time.

In 2020, Mr Joe Biden and Ms Kamala Harris – then US President-elect and Vice-president-elect – were on the cover, and in 2019, it was climate activist Greta Thunberg.

In 2018, the title went to Mr Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and other journalists.

In 2017, the title went to “the silence breakers”, women who stepped forward to accuse powerful men of sexual harassment and assault.

And in 2016, it was then President-elect Donald Trump, whom the magazine called the “president of the divided states of America”.

Historical choices

The persons of the year have not always been without controversy.

In 1938, Time chose Adolf Hitler, and the magazine gave the dubious honour to Josef Stalin twice, in 1939 and in 1942.

In 1972, the magazine chose the “improbable partnership” of then President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Mr Henry Kissinger.

Other times, the magazine chose regular citizens.

In 1969, Time gave the distinction to “The Middle Americans”, celebrating them for continuing to pray in public schools in defiance of the United States Supreme Court.

Nearly 40 years later, the magazine plastered a mirror on the cover of the magazine and named “You” its person of the year for 2006.

And in other instances, it was not a person at all. In 1982, there was a “machine of the year”: the computer. AFP, NYTIMES