Читать книгу Taylor Swift: The Whole Story - Chas Newkey-Burden - Страница 5

As Taylor Swift looked back over the year 2013, she could hardly believe what a momentous twelve months it had been for her. Sales of her fourth album, Red, had taken her total record sales beyond 26 million. Meanwhile, her songs had now been downloaded 75 million times, making her the number-one digital singles artist of all time.

Taylor’s achievements become ever more impressive when you measure them against those of other artists. For instance, at the start of the year she became the first artist since The Beatles to spend six or more weeks at number one with three consecutive albums.

She notched up all these remarkable accomplishments before she turned 24. Yet young Taylor was treated like an industry veteran when, in November 2013, the Country Music Association Awards handed her its Pinnacle Award, which is its equivalent of the lifetime achievement gong. Most awards hand such honours to artists in their fifties or beyond. At the ceremony, a video tribute was aired, in which Julia Roberts, Justin Timberlake and Mick Jagger gushed over the youngster’s talent and influence.

While the middle-aged country music industry treats Taylor like an elder stateswoman, the teenage-driven pop market screams its appreciation for her as one of its own. Serious music magazines treat her with reverence, while celebrity gossip rags obsess over her love life. And who else but Taylor could carry the banjo into the pop world with such effortless grace and hipness?

She is the princess of paradox. While some artists feel constrained by the boundaries of music and image, she flutters lightly over them. As well as dipping her feet in the waters of pop, she has written bold arena rock tunes and even experimented with dubstep.

This bewitching young lady of contrasts can, within one album, softly whisper lyrics which offer sweet, touching perspectives on love and romance, then spit out furious choruses of vengeance, defiance and denunciation. She is a conventionally stunning, leggy blonde who nonetheless plays the part of the perennial gawky outsider.

In an era of X-rated stage productions from the likes of Rihanna and Lady Gaga, Taylor stands tall as a clean-cut wholesome American – a demure diva of apple-pie sweetness. Just weeks after her friend Miley Cyrus created a global storm by ‘twerking’ at an awards ceremony, the elegantly turned-out Taylor was grabbing the headlines her own way by sharing a microphone with Prince William and Jon Bon Jovi at a posh charity event in Kensington Gardens.

And so a year that began with her kissing One Direction heart-throb Harry Styles in Manhattan ended with her high-fiving the man in line to be the future King of England. Meanwhile, the front cover of the influential New Yorker magazine named her ‘The biggest pop star in the world’. The respected – and rather serious – music monthly Rolling Stone was also joining in the cacophony of praise for Taylor. Focusing on her performances during the Red tour, it gushed: ‘Seeing Taylor Swift live in 2013 is seeing a maestro at the top of her or anyone’s game.’

On the surface, Taylor played it cool and acted as if all these experiences were just a normal part of life. Inside, though, she could scarcely believe how thrilling her existence had become. It is all so far from the world in which she grew up.