TIME Magazine announced that they have named Taylor Swift their ‘2023 Person of the Year,’ beating out a host of finalists (including Barbie and King Charles III) who over the last 12 months dominated in politics and entertainment

TIME called Swit a person with “singular influence” who has found a way to “transcend borders” and be “a source of light” in the world. TIME said in its profile on Swift: “While her popularity has grown across the decades, this is the year that Swift, 33, achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force.”  The publication added that Swift was selected because she found a way to give people around the world hope in such dark times:  “No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well. Achieving this feat is something we often chalk up to the alignments of planets and fates, but giving too much credit to the stars ignores her skill and her power.”

Swift revealed to TIME: “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been. Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it, but there’s only one question … Are you not entertained?”

Part of Swift’s incredible achievements across 2023 was her “Eras Tour,” which grossed about $2.2 billion in North American ticket sales alone. She has dominated not only arenas, but local movie theaters as well with her concert film “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which raked in about $96 million in the box office in the United States and Canada, making it the highest-grossing concert film domestically for an opening weekend. The singer/songwriter also has more No. 1 albums than any other woman in history, including three this year; and she broke her own Spotify record by becoming the most-streamed artist in a single day in the streamer’s history, with “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” becoming Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day this year.

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