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This year's World's Most Powerful Women list has arrived and Forbes ranked Taylor Swift as one of the the top five! For the 2023 list, the global pop star soared from No. 79 in 2022 to No. 5 this year. The feat comes as no surprise as Swift has spent the last year shattering records and reaching new highs in her career.
In October, the Grammy winner became a billionaire, and her unbelievably popular Eras Tour grossed nearly $850 million across 66 shows in the US. According to the U.S. Travel Association, the US leg of the Eras Tour added over $5 billion to state economies per Forbes.
“She’s like a big corporation, essentially, operating in many sectors,” labor economist and University of Chicago professor Carolyn Sloan was quoted saying in the Forbes write-up about Swift. “Her audience has skewed so young and so female for so long that people may have underestimated how big this thing could be, economically. I don’t think anybody doubts that today.”
Swift may be the most powerful woman in the pop music world this year, but when it comes to the world at large, three politicians came out on top: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, US Vice President Kamala Harris, and Prime Minister of Italy Giorgia Meloni.
Still, this quote from branding expert Stacy Jones sums it up: “All those people with hard power are truly powerful women, but they’re not going to be able to change the world in the way that Taylor Swift is.”