Taylor Swift Named Time’s 2023 Person Of The Year

Taylor Swift has been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023, beating out Xi Jinping, Hollywood strikers, Trump prosecutors and even Barbie.

“The person chosen has typically been a ruler over traditional domains of power…very often a politician or a titan of industry,” writes Time‘s editor-inchief Sam Jacobs writes, “And yet the person whose singular influence was revealed throughout 2023 has held none of these roles—or anything remotely similar…Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light…Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.”

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Jacobs revealed the magazine’s choice on NBC’s Today this morning, acknowledging, “Picking one person who represents the eight billion people on the planet is no easy task. We picked a choice that represents joy.” Watch the segment above.

In the magazine, which comes in three different Swift covers, Time writes, “Swift’s accomplishments as an artist — culturally, critically, and commercially — are so legion that to recount them seems almost beside the point.”

Swift beat out eight other short-list contenders for the title, including Hollywood strikers, Xi Jinping, Sam Altman, Trump Prosecutors, the Barbie movie, Vladimir Putin, King Charles III and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

The annual selection chooses the individual, group, or concept that has had the most influence on the world throughout the previous 12 months.

In an interview included in the Time Person of the Year issue, Swift addresses her big year: “It feels like the breakthrough moment of my career, happening at 33…And for the first time in my life, I was mentally tough enough to take what comes with that….This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.”

She also addresses her much-discussed romance with football star Travis Kelce. “This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she says. “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. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”

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