Sing-alongs in front of the screen, by-the-music dancing, and happy tears are not generally associated with audience reactions inside a movie theater. But for viewers of Taylor Swift’s concert movie Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, it is a common theme inside the theater.
As a culturally uninformed writer (I focus more time on politics and STEM stuff), even I am a Swiftie and can comprehend Taylor Swift’s influence on modern culture. She has won 12 Grammy awards so far, her Eras Tour is the first tour to break the billion-dollar mark, The Eras Tour movie became the highest-grossing concert film of all time, not to mention she was Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2023.
As a pop-culture moron, I did listen to her music out of curiosity since news about her success repeatedly popped up in my news feeds. I would argue her music is indeed influential and I understand its power touches the heartstrings of many listeners, and to this point that is the limit of my cultural analysis of Taylor Swift. But I am not here to write too much about the cultural influence of Swift, I want to point out her economic and political influence, and what that means going forward.
Let’s start by addressing the power Swift has with the economy. In 2023, her Eras Tour is in a league of her own when it comes to ticket sales. In North America alone, ticket sales are expected to make a gross profit of $2.2 billion. While in other parts of the world, massive crowds of fans gathered to see the icon perform in places like Brazil and Argentina and there are no signs of decreasing popularity from Paris to Tokyo to Singapore to London. It’s not just ticket sales that are profiting from the Taylor momentum, the Eras Tours is predicted to have generated close to $5 billion in consumer spending in the United States alone. Many Swifties would travel for hours to attend one Eras concert, which means money would be spent locally and nationally. Even better news for the economy, Swifites are big spenders, dropping a range of $1300-1500 on transport, food, hotels, and merchandise. According to the Bank of America (BofA), Taylor Swift is as big of an economic phenomenon to a city as hosting a Super Bowl event.
Taylor Swift’s biggest power is her large and loyal fanbase. Swifties are happy and joyful and are more than willing to follow Taylor Swift’s influence to do something good for the world. Even faced with conspiracy theorists who have made wild and untrue speculations about Taylor Swift since she kissed her boyfriend Travis Kelce in a recent game, they have almost all reacted in good faith and a level of wholesomeness rare to many observing inside the political sphere. Listening to Swift’s music can be beneficial to mental health, and her themes resonate with young adults and teenagers, which may explain the upbeat nature you see in many Swifites.
What’s more special is Taylor Swift’s influence in the political world. From what we know, Taylor is not a particularly vocal political person compared to many other artists, though there is a video clip that has gone viral repeatedly of Swift wanting to speak out against Trump in private.
However, her influence adding to the passions of Swifites is what had made the difference. In November 2022, Ticketmaster made tremendous blunders in selling Era Tour tickets like the website crashing just an hour into sales, and faced massive public criticism over scalpers being able to purchase then resale a large amount of Era Tour tickets at much higher prices. Because of outrage from Swifites, it garnered enough political attention that the US Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation the following month. Then in January 2023, a Live Nation executive was grilled by Congress over the fiasco and had to publically apologize to Swift and her fans.
For a much more recent example, after nonconsensual and sexually explicit deep fake AI images of Swift were distributed on social media, not only did X (formerly Twitter) ban searches for a few days to contain the damage, but a bipartisan measure was pushed in the Senate to tackle deep fakes and enable victims of digital forgeries to seek civil penalties over the damage done by deep fakes. If not for Taylor Swift’s unfortunate experience, lawmakers would have been much slower in dealing with one of the most hideous misuses and harms AI is currently causing in society.
Swift and her fans also exert a large amount of political influence in voting. Just last year, Taylor Swift posted on Instagram a short message to her 272 million followers to register to vote and directed them to the non-profit website Vote.org. The site then reported thanks to Swift’s post, more than 35,000 registrations were recorded, the most in voter registrations since the 2020 election. Political analysts say, despite occasional endorsements not turning out in the pop star’s outcome during the 2018 midterms, Swift’s endorsement for the upcoming 2024 election could be essential in turning out first-time voters to the polls, and in some states, it could be a deciding factor in turning red states blue or keeping swing states for the Democrats in the electoral college.
In 2020, Swift endorsed Joe Biden for president, and many won’t be surprised she would do the same in 2024. In fact, Biden’s campaign is considering courting Swift and help dissuade youth pessimism over Joe Biden’s myriad problems from his stance in the Gaza war to his old age.
Meanwhile, the difference for a Swift endorsement in 2024 is the fact that she is making Republicans nervous. Since Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs are heading towards the Super Bowl, many prominent Republican politicians and media figureheads have promoted conspiracy theories about Swift being a psyop for Biden and has become a culture war target for many MAGA conservatives.
Given that the Super Bowl is coming up, Swift’s international clout is also rising, so much so the Japanese embassy in the US is reassuring Swifties that Taylor will be on time to watch the Super Bowl live a day after her concert in Tokyo. As the 2024 election rolls on, many eyes will be on arguably the world’s most powerful woman and her moves in the political world as well as the cultural sphere.