I wanted to chime in, since I'm in the unique situation of not being a "Swiftie" but still having an above-average knowledge of Taylor Swift due to being married to a Swiftie.

For starters, her songs are very relatable for women. Especially in women around her age, she was routinely writing songs that spoke to the emotions during each periods of their lives. My wife, for example, was in middle/high school when Taylor was releasing her romantic country songs, and met me right around when Taylor released Lover. This is all because Taylor is extremely autobiographical with her lyrics and was writing about what she was experiencing at the time. She wrote lovesongs in Speak Now because she was in high school and early college when she produced the album. She wrote Lover because she had met a man who, at the time, she perceived to be a man she could spend the rest of her life with. Since Red, very few of her songs are about hypothetical situations. Almost all of them are about her real experiences as a person and as a woman, with the exception of folklore and Evermore, and that speaks to women in a very strong way. Her lyrics and reasons behinds songs are deep, much deeper than most give her credit for.

Additionally, she is extremely good at marketing. Many of her songs and albums have Easter eggs in them that only true fans will be able to find. She also drops a lot of cryptic hints, which her fans love to dissect and interpret to try and predict major releases or announcements. It's just good fun for them, and it increases the hype significantly. Also, her concerts are not just live music, they're a whole show. The Eras concert is 3 hours long, and she is singing and running the entire time. She rarely lip-syncs - I say rarely because I've heard claims that she does but I have never seen it - and gives it her all every single concert. Her band and many of her dancers and support staff have been with her for a decade or more now, and they have continued to routinely put on shows to the best of their abilities without fail.

Finally, she is, most Swifties believe, a genuinely good person. The worst thing I've ever heard of her doing is loaning her private jet out to her friends and families which caused her to break the news because her jet was causing a lot of emissions. Beyond that, she seems to be a grounded woman who genuinely loves her fans and the people around her.

If you take nothing else away from this post, this is the most important fact: She is relatable to women. She sings about her lived experiences, many of which are relatable to her fans.

Think of a dish made by a world class chef, that food is probably exquisitely crafted using unique and fresh ingredients. There probably aren't that many people out there who truly appreciate it, and probably a lot who just think it's weird.

Now think of pizza. It's relatively cheap and broadly appealing. It wouldn't be put in the same class as the food prepared by the chef, but a lot more of it gets consumed.

Taylor Swift is talented, pretty, affable, has a superior work ethic, and makes music that's catchy and easily digestible. Like pizza, her music appeals to the broadest group of people.

-Very skilled songwriter. I don't necessarily like all her stuff but I legitimately think she's the best songwriter (meaning, composing music and writing lyrics) of her generation. Probably since Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel.

-Very attractive and a good performer

-Well connected in the music industry let her get an early start/inside track

-obsessed with being popular. I don't mean that in a negative way, but her primary objective with her music is to please as many people as possible. I think the documentary "Miss Americana" on Netflix explains that very well-at one point she straight up says "I just want people to like me" or something like that. That means her music/career has always focused on mass appeal as opposed to making more... limited-appeal music like most artists do at some point in their career

-she's kept a remarkably clean image even through being famous for close to two decades. It's very telling that the worst thing her haters can say about her is "but her plane uses a lot of carbon!" This means parents let kids listen to her, brands love her as a sponsor, nobody boycotts her, etc.

-one last thing, I think people love her songs because they feel like they're true. Her songs have a very intimate, almost confessional quality that a lot of artists strive for buy often comes off as fake.

I used to dislike Taylor Swift along with all other contemporary pop stars. Maybe even a little bit more, because she had the audacity to call herself Country: Spitting in the face of personal heroes like Kristofferson, Nelson, and Cash.

Then I stopped being an edgy teenager, Swift released Shake it Off, and I had to recognize it was a fun song to dance to. In an ironic kind of way of course, but nevertheless.

And then, in 2015, Ryan Adams released his cover album of Swift's 1989, playing every single song on the album in a folksy way. I dug it. And with it, I had to appreciate that Taylor Swift is one hell of a songwriter: I loved the songs, I just don't love the sound of pop music all that much. That's personal taste, not everything I dislike is bad.

Then Ryan Adams fell from grace with metoo, so fuck him. At least it triggered Father John Misty to publish (and later remove) his legendary covers of Swift in the style of the Velvet Underground.

Fast forward to 2020, and Taylor Swift dabbles with music I can actually enjoy listening to with her album folklore. Pretty cool. I actually got my expectations up for her next album, evermore, low-key hoping that it would be musically inspired by the Battle of Evermore. Sadly I was wrong, but again, it's a matter of personal preferences.

What matters more is the fact that she's reinventing herself from album to album - she's successful in one formula, and she just ditches it and moves on to something different. And every time she does it, she seems to be even more successful than the last time. Her growth as an artist is astonishing.

Finally, she's just cool. Fuck the labels - she'll just casually re-records her entire discography in order to take back control of her songs. She's caught up in all kinds of stupid celebrity drama, but it tends to be the rest of the industry falling over like toddlers trying to drag her into shit for PR while she acts like the only adult in the room. She also scores points for casually hanging out with Billy Bragg and encouraging people to vote and shit.

I'm personally not a fan. But I am a fan of her making the right-wing nut jobs apoplectic.

In a word: marketing. In two words: relentless marketing.

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.

The music industry has been a racket for nearly 100 years. Music doesn't get popular because people like it, it gets popular because it's promoted. Way back when, promoters would pay radio stations to play their music to encourage sales. The methods are slightly different now, but it's still the same kind of old boy's club telling people what they like.

Taylor Swift understood the industry she was getting into, and was very adept at exploiting it.

Her songs are produced by the CIA and contain subliminal messages that make her irresistible.

I'm not a huge fan or anything, but I think she's a really talented musician and really good at managing her fame. She keeps a strong relationship with her fans, her music spans numerous genres, and her father is a wealth manager.

Watching her Tiny Desk concert helped me get more into her music so I could enjoy it with my daughter.

Don't really see her as being massively more popular than people like Michael Jackson or Madonna at their peak. She's like 18 years into her career at this point, like a snowball accumulating more and more fans.

Of course it helps that she had rich parents to be able to grease the wheels in the early stages of her career.

The music is alright. There's a decent amount of it, and it's fairly varied. It's called pop for a reason.

You are asking an infinitely difficult question of why she is so incredibly popular, I don't think I can tell you why she's more popular than, say, Beyoncé. Except maybe that she is more consistent. That said, I'll give you my perspective on why I like Taylor Swift.

I'm a dude and my music taste is pretty diverse but I mostly grew up listening to metal and punk. That said, when I left my ex (for the second time). It felt really good to listen to We are never ever getting back together on repeat. Most breakups I've had, had songs that have helped me through and leaving a toxic relationship... It just felt really good to repeatedly sing those words over and over.

I don't know if it's actually true but I'm a guitarist and I've heard the phrase "Taylor Swift is the Beatles of the 21st century" meaning her music releases currently have the largest impact on guitar sales and popularity. If for nothing else, I respect her a lot for performing live with a guitar. She doesn't do anything crazy but you don't have to have crazy guitar skills to make good music. I personally enjoy learning her songs every now and then because a) they are relatively straightforward to learn but still encompass nice playful elements, b) I am mostly interested in becoming a better singer nowadays and her songs are definitely challenging for me to sing.

3. Both folklore and evermore are really nice albums imo. Very nice and tasteful music. Last year I had a phase where I was having trouble finding music. I was sick of extreme metal, I was sick of hardcore techno, and I listened to so much leftist folk and folk punk that I grew sick of it. All the music I listened to was always fast, intense and challenging. I just wanted nice songs that I can sing along to with real instrumentation. I realised I don't mind pop music but I like real instruments because they feel more real to me (fwiw lol, please don't take this as hatred for electronics, I also love techno as stated above). Well folklore and evermore offer just that for me. Nice songs with real instruments and beautiful instrumentation. I prefer folklore for being darker but evermore uses more guitar which I also like. My fav songs out of the 2 albums:

Folklore

• cardigan
• mirrorball
• this is me trying
• invisible string

Evermore

• willow
• champagne problems
• 'tis the damn season

I still want to express that I don't always like her lyric writing. She uses brand names a bunch and I also feel like there are often references to American things which I just don't know about.

Also, while I like folklore and evermore, I find them borderline impossible to listen to all the way through. All the songs basically strike the same mood, it's nice relaxing music, but there's not a big emotional arc throughout the albums for me. I tend to stop listening to evermore once I reach "no body, no crime"... God that song is awful lol.

I'll sum up some answers that made things click for me

1. She writes songs spanning many emotions.

2. Her albums span multiple genres. (I've only heard pop and country, but I'm not a fan.)

3. She is hard working, prolific, and puts on a show.

So with that combination it seems she has something for everyone. Personally, I only know one TS song, but it's catchy as hell. So there's no song that I hate that happens to TS song either.

About point 2.: I'm a Paul Simon fan and he spans multiple genres, but I wouldn't expect non-fans to know that.

great marketing

Taylor for me is extremely emotional and autobiographical. I connect emotionally with her songs in a way that allows me to feel what she's feeling. Music is emotional and usually has a message, but for me her music does make me feel more.

Which makes sense, I always loved pink Floyd for their art and what they were trying to say, I usually am an emotional person, and I think for a lot of people that's why she's popular.

You have an emotion you're working through? She's got a song for it.

Kanye interrupted her acceptance speech with some crazy shit.

From there on, it was just maintaining the momentum.

I'm definitely not a swiftie, but she does have some catchy music, and Shake it off was the default song for getting my kids out of bad moods and over bad days.

I also used to think she was a catty bitch for the way she was caught on camera making a face when Selena Gomez was with Bieber. However since then I've heard her speak about things she cares about and I appreciate her passion and that she's against the things I'm generally against, she definitely seems to care and motivate her swifties to care about the right things, and that makes me tend to support her.

Just commenting to let you know that you are not alone in your confusion.

To me, most of her songs are pleasant but forgetable.

She seems like just one of many female Pop artists with a bit of girl-next-door charm. Maybe that charm is her appeal?

Maybe she is a witch?

Who knows.

Under the Influence has an episode about her marketing.

She makes music that a lot of people really like. Often times because they relate. It sounds like it’s not your kind of music, and that’s fine. Not really any more to it.

ITT:

Things go viral sometimes and it snowballs. The more famous you are, the more famous you can become. She's also good enough at being an entertainer to keep riding the wave of increased fame, with added resources the bigger she gets.