If I had to describe 2023 in three words, I'd choose "Taylor Alison Swift." From the headlines to our Spotify Wrappeds, this past year, we've all been in our Eras Era.
Here are 13 of Taylor Swift's best and biggest moments of 2023:
1. In February, she won the Grammy for Best Music Video for All Too Well: The Short Film, which she also directed. It was her 12th Grammy win.
She walked the red carpet in a Midnights-esque dress by Roberto Cavalli, who was also one of the designers she worked with for her Eras Tour wardrobe.
She also reportedly wore $3 million worth of Lorraine Schwartz jewelry.
2. On March 17th, Taylor kicked off the Eras Tour in Glendale, Arizona — and it's on track to become the highest-grossing tour of all time.
She went on to extend the tour more than 10 times, resulting in 151 planned shows...so far!
3. This year, Taylor released collabs with several artists she loves, including Hayley Williams and Fall Out Boy, but her biggest — and now Grammy-nominated — collab was "Karma" featuring Ice Spice. On May 26th, she brought Ice Spice out on stage in East Rutherford, New Jersey for the music video premiere.
Taylor told Spotify, "Collaborating with Ice Spice on 'Karma' was one of the most natural things. She reached out through her team, just kind of saying, 'Hey, you know, Ice has been a big fan of Taylor since she was a little kid. [We] would love to collaborate if that was ever something that came about.' ... I immediately got her number and said, 'Hey, would you want to do your version of 'Karma?' ... She jumped in headfirst."
She later told the LA Times, "I really loved working with Ice because I got to see firsthand how focused she is, and she came in more prepared than anyone I've worked with. I made a habit early on in my career of bringing songs I'd written into sessions that were nearly done, to prove to my collaborators that I never expected to coast creatively. She did that with her verse and also sent me a demo of it beforehand. I see a drive in Ice that's beautifully rounded out by other qualities like humility and humor, curiosity and focus. She's very knowledgeable about the inner workings of the business, as well as obviously being tapped into this very natural creative wellspring. It's those two sides of the coin that you just don't see."
4. Many of the cities she visited on tour went all out to honor her, starting with Glendale temporarily changing its name to Swift City. Internationally, Brazilian Swifties campaigned for the Junior Jewels T-shirt from her "You Belong With Me" music video to be projected onto the Christ the Redeemer statue — and they got Eduardo Paes, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, and Father Omar, who runs the statue's projection, to make it happen!
Father Omar agreed to the projection in exchange for fans donating clean water and 20,000 panettone to local charities.
Of course, plenty of other cities have done big things to honor Taylor. For example, Las Vegas lit up its Gateway Arches in the color of her eras; Arlington, Texas, named a street Taylor Swift Way; and Minneapolis renamed itself Swiftie-apolis.
5. She released Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) on July 7 and 1989 (Taylor's Version) on October 27 — then in December, she became the only living artist to have five albums in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart at the same time.
The other albums she had in the Top 10 were Midnights, Folklore, and Lover.
The only other artist in history to have five albums in the Top 10 at once was Prince, whose albums charted following his death in 2016.
With the success of "Cruel Summer" as a single, she became the first female artist to have 10 Billboard Hot 100 #1 hits as well as 10 #1 Billboard 200 albums.
In an Instagram video celebrating hitting #1, Taylor's collaborator Jack Antonoff said, "A song from five fucking years ago...a song that we said was the best song, but we thought, 'Oh, you know what, this was our secret best song.' That's what we thought."
Taylor added, "We just wanted to say thank you so much for making 'Cruel Summer' a Hot 100 #1, and it's not even the summer anymore. It's deep fall. I'm wearing a sweater. We love you guys."
7. During her July 7th show in Kansas city, Taylor celebrated the release of Speak Now (Taylor's Version) by premiering her "I Can See You" music video. It featured Joey King and Presley Cash from her "Mean" music video as well as Taylor Lautner, her ex/muse who inspired "Back to December" — and she brought them all out on stage with her.
Lautner's wife, who's also named Taylor Lautner, is a longtime fan of Swift, and the three Taylors have become close friends.
8. In August, as the first US leg of the Eras Tour winded down, she reportedly gave her dancers, truck driver, and other crew members and employees more than $55 million in bonuses.
According to Michael Scherkenbach, the founder and CEO of the Shomotion trucking company, she gave each of the almost 50 truckers $100,000 each.
He told CNN, "The typical amount is $5,000 to $10,000 each. So this large amount is unbelievable... Look, a fair wage doesn't put you in a position to buy a home. But this opens up that possibility." He said the amount of money was "life-changing."
9. In September, Taylor and Travis Kelce basically hard launched their relationship when she attended the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Chicago Bears NFL game. It was at the same stadium where he watched the Eras Tour months earlier and tried (and failed) to give her his phone number on a friendship bracelet.
During a Buenos Aires show in November, she changed the lyrics to "Karma" from "Karma is the guy on the screen" to "Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me."
Speaking about their relationship publicly for the first time, she told Time, "This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell. We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I'm grateful for, because we got to get to know each other."
10. On October 11th, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour hit AMC theaters, and less than a week later, it became the highest-grossing concert film in the US ever.
She made an atypical deal for the film's distribution, bypassing the major movie studios, who were at the center of the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes at the time, to distribute it directly through AMC Theaters.
Director Christopher Nolan praised her decision, telling biographer Kai Bird in a conversation for the Leon Levy Center for Biography, "Taylor Swift is about to show the studios. Her concert film is not being distributed by the studios. It's being distributed by the theater owner, AMC, and it's going to make an enormous amount of money. This is the thing. [The theater] is a format. This is a way of seeing things and sharing stories or sharing experiences that's incredibly valuable."
11. Many celebrity guests joined her at the premiere of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour on October 11th — most notably Beyoncé. Then, at the London premiere of Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé on November 30th, Taylor showed up in support of Beyoncé.
In an Instagram post she made after her premiere, Taylor wrote, "I'm so glad I'll never know what my life would've been like without Beyoncé's influence. The way she's taught me and every artist out here to break rules and defy industry norms. Her generosity of spirit. Her resilience and versatility. She's been a guiding light throughout my career, and the fact that she showed up tonight was like an actual fairytale."
12. In October, Taylor and Travis crashed Saturday Night Live and made surprise cameos.
Travis appeared in a sketch about NFL commentators trying not to talk about Taylor.
She introduced Ice Spice's second performance as the musical guest.
On his Las Culturistas podcast, SNL cast member Bowen Yang said, "They just came! [After dress rehearsal] I walk outside to go to my makeup chair. I see two people talking to two tall people...tallest people in the world... I see them together, and I go, 'I'm in the Redwood Forest.'"
13. And finally, in December, Taylor was named TIME's Person of the Year.
TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs told TIME, "The selections over the years have tended to follow certain patterns. The person chosen has typically been a ruler over traditional domains of power. He — and yes, usually it has been a 'he' — is very often a politician or a titan of industry. Fourteen US Presidents, five leaders of Russia or the Soviet Union, and three Popes have all been recognized. And yet the person whose singular influence was revealed throughout 2023 has held none of these roles — or anything remotely similar. Every year contains light and dark; 2023 was a year with significant shares of darkness. In a divided world, where too many institutions are failing, Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light. No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well... Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story."
This year, Taylor made history as the first woman to appear on TIME's Person of the Year cover two separate times. Previously, in 2017, she appeared on the cover as one of the Silence Breakers, a group of women who were chosen for speaking out about sexual misconduct and inspiring others to do the same.
She's also the first Person of the Year to be chosen because of her success in the arts.