I don’t get it. Her music is sometimes catchy but otherwise unremarkable, from the songs I’ve heard. How does she break all these records and accumulate so much fame and wealth?
She’s pretty, but a lot of singer songwriters are, especially those with makeup and costume people, a support staff.
Is there something else to her that people like?
I’m confused about what makes her so apparently unique or phenomenal.
Update: there are so many things that make swift unique or phenomenal.
I’ve received tons of great answers from people that have helped me understand, like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle, many factors that makes swift different and consequently more successful than her peers.
Clever lyrics, top-tier production, sharing autobiographical and emotional points in her life very directly, apparent honesty with few or no public blemishes, creating a community of fans through Easter eggs and house parties and unconventional, but always personal methods, an early start supported by wealthy parents, she keeps winning against abusers, and her music itself is popular and fun.
Those are just a few of the puzzle pieces contributed here, and a dive into this post is a pretty good explanation of many of the factors that must be contributing to her phenomenal success and recognition, that set her apart from other pop stars, even pop stars who were phenoms in their own right.
This is a very educational post, thank you to everyone who has contributed.
The reason is that her dad is quite rich and was a stock broker.
He invested heavily in the label that had his daughter under contract, being able to dictate what the label was focusing on and on top he has thrown another Million on her, to start the journey.
So to sum it up a huge tone of money, contacts and knowledge about how to run a business by her father.
Both of her parents worked in finance and upper middle class, but not “quite rich”. He invested in a 3% stake in the label, approximately $120,000. That is big money for most but not ultra rich money. Even today they are worth the low millions.
Contacts, enough money to launch a career, business acumen, hard work, and luck have been most of it.
Never said ultra rich and by any means someone who is able to take over a million out of their pocket to Kickstart anything is rich.
In what world does investing roughly 3x the median yearly income in the US into your child’s potential music career not count as “quite rich”?
It is difficult to comprehend how staggering wealth inequality is. Minimum wage earners have more in common with her parents, then her parents did with the truly wealthy. I have always liked Pen’s parade (which is about income rather than wealth), but there are other aids. One pixel wealth might work in this context because they provide a marker for median income in the visualization.
Okay, and? Sorry if I have a bit of a snarky tone throughout this comment, but it frankly annoys me when people bring up stuff like this. Yes, richer people exist, and mathematically the Swift family net worth (pre-Taylor’s career) was surely closer to a minimum wage family than to Jeff Bezos. I don’t expect anyone would suggest Mr. and Ms. Swift to be first at the guillotine if the revolution comes. I don’t even begrudge them using their wealth to help their daughter’s career. I bet most would do the same if they had the resources. But…
Being able to invest anything, let alone 120,000$ into something as unsure as a pop music career, is very foreign to me, a minimum wage earner. From my perspective, the Swift family had a heck of a lot more in common with the elite than with my peers. Sure, they didn’t have “buy-private-islands-and-tickets-to-space-Musk-Bezos” type money, but they clearly had enough money to never need or even want anything.
Comparing this with minimum wage earners is pretty shortsighted, even if mathematically their finances are closer to minimum wage earners than to the 0.0000001% of ultra wealthy. The leap from “closer in net worth mathematically” to minimum wage earners than the ultra wealth to “have more in common” with minimum wage earners than the ultra wealthy is just plain wrong. The math doesn’t represent the reality of these different financial situations. In reality, their lives were much closer to that of the elite than to the poor fucker buying their groceries in quarters at the Dollar Store.
The existence of people who have so much wealth the human mind can’t even conceive of it doesn’t negate the wealth the Swift family clearly had, and it certainly doesn’t mean their economic and social lives are closer to that of minimum wage earners than to the ultra wealthy.
You’re not wrong, but that doesn’t make you entirely right either. The “crabs in a bucket” mentality comes from attacking people who are doing slightly better than you. It might seem like they significant wealth, but they can still be bankrupted by a chronic medical diagnosis or any other of a million things. I choose to focus on the real issue - the 0.0001% and not people making 4 or 5 times the median income.
That’s where my mind went too
You have a point that there’s a huge difference in the life of a minimum wage family and a family able to invest 6 figures. Context matters though and I think the point was that they didn’t have an overwhelming amount that can force success; we’re talking about a financial-secure and supported start that enables pursuit of things that are unlikely to pan out. Still no small luxury, by any means.
FWIW 0.1% is already 38 million dollars (net worth, US, 2012 data).
The 120k went into the label, he pumped another million into her directly just for the first album.
btw I tried to find a trustfull source for the claim that it was only 120k. There are different numbers thrown around, while the 120k is the lowest. The source of that number is Wikipedia and the 2 linked “resources” for that don’t mention it. One of the 2 resources is even an article that is not about Tailor Swift but rather one about some Tobey Keith instead.
I don’t think it was disclosed. I couldn’t find any proof about the amount.
She was 14 when “signing” the record label contract.
This is basically the moment where they used that load of money.And everyone who is thinking that she is a self-made anything is blind by choice.
Parents throwing Kids at that age into international careers make me at least sceptical about their motivation. That it seems to have worked out this time, doesn’t change that at all.
The current world in which the median yearly income is basically poverty
My parents couldnt afford $1200 to invest in me. Mustve been nice
Taylor’s dad got her daughter a label to help make her a star, but I think that Taylor might not have done as well if she went through typical music industry channels. Taylor wasn’t a Rebecca Black kind of artist; she wrote a lot of her own music and was able to define her image as herself at a time when that wasn’t common at that time.
Keep in mind she came up around the time the music industry has lost most of its revenue due to streaming. The music industry would have commonly invested in Taylor like artists a decade or two ago, but the economics of doing that wasn’t there. Self promotion and funding also wasn’t that uncommon, a lot of the rap around that time came out under the same model of artists promoting their own work before getting signed; Taylor just had more resources.
But even then, daddy buying an label would explain a one hit wonder, or maybe even a good album or two. It wouldn’t explain Taylor’s sustained success. Money only goes so far.
Oh shnit, I didn’t even know about this. Okay that explains at least a bit.
Thanks.
That explains how she had a headstart in her career, but has nothing to do with her being so popular right now.
Besides the insanely huge help she had on the beginning, the bigger part was for sure the knowledge transfer in terms of how to run a monetary wise successfull business.
And yes she is talented, I’m not saying she isn’t. But the advantage she had, due to this, speak for itself.
They worked mid-level jobs in finance, which pays well compared to most careers, but it’s just on the higher end of middle class. I know several successful people in the music industry and that’s honestly a pretty common story. They all had high end instruments and gear at a young age. One band I know had a dedicated jam space at one of their father’s warehouses. They could leave their gear set up in a secure location and play loud anytime for as long as they liked. Things like that really contribute to success.
The Kid Laroi is another example of it. Both parents were in the industry and he had a development contract at 14. At 17 he was living with Juice Wrld and doing remixes with Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber. That doesn’t happen by accident.
Label*
You’re right. Ups :P
Two n’s in tonne.