Taylor Swift is one of the world’s best-selling artists, a billionaire, and a record breaker. And she’s just 34.
With her 11th studio album – The Tortured Poets Department – out today (her follow up to 2022’s Grammy winning Midnights) the buzz around the singeris at fever pitch.
With a history of writing about her exes (you know who you are, Joe Jonas, Harry Styles, Jake Gyllenhaal and John Mayer), there’s much interest over whether any songs will refer to her English ex-boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn who she dated for six years until their split last year.
There’s a strong suggestion track number five (the slot she always gives to her most meaningful songs) – So Long London – may do just that.
And the very title of album may be referring to a WhatsApp group Alwyn previously set up with fellow actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, called The Tortured Man Club.
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Speaking about it in 2022, the actors joked that they’d not been using it much since becoming less tortured. Four months later news of Swift and Alwyn’s split emerged.
Meanwhile, in current boyfriend news, Swift’s latest beau – Travis Kelce – says he’s had a listen to parts of the album and says it’s “unbelievable”.
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The US star’s rise from teen country pop singer to all-round global phenomenon has been – well – swift.
We take a look at the unstoppable rise and rise of Taylor Swift.
She started out Taylor Alison Swift, born in Pennsylvania and named after singer-songwriter James Taylor.
Inspired to become a country singer after watching a documentary about Faith Hill (one of the genre’s best-selling stars), her parents upped sticks to move to Tennessee in 1993 to help her forge her music career, and Swift landed her first record deal aged just 13.
A musical chameleon, she’s switched up her genre a few times since then, moving from country to pop to alternative and folk.
And as well as moving forward artistically, she’s quite literally reclaimed her past too, re-recording her back catalogue since 2021 as a way to regain ownership of her music following a spat with talent manager Scooter Braun, who bought her former label Big Machine Records.
Earlier this year, Swift made Grammy history when she became the first person to win album of the year four times with Midnights.
She’s come a long way since Kanye West infamously stormed the stage at the 2009 VMAs as Swift accepted her award for best video by a female artist, a stunt he later claimed in a lyric “made that b**** famous“.
Her fame has been on the rise ever since – reaching peak Swift over the last few years.
Billionaire status
Swift is a billionaire, according to Forbes magazine, accumulating $1.1bn (£875m), based on earnings from her Eras Tour and the worth of her pop music catalogue.
It makes her the first musician to hit 10-figure status solely based on her songs and performances.
Following the start of her Eras Tour, kicking off in March 2023, she became the first artist to surpass $1bn (£800m) in revenue, breaking the Guinness World Record for the highest-grossing music tour.
Plus, she was the biggest-selling global recording artist of 2023, breaking another record by topping the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s (IFPI) global artist chart for a fourth time.
In 2023 Swift was ranked as Spotify’s most popular artist, and she became the first female artist to have four albums on Billboard’s top 10 list concurrently.
Her Eras Tour – which started out with 53 shows played across the US before expanding to include 78 international dates – has sold out stadiums around the world, with an estimated $900m in ticket sales last year, according to Billboard.
It’s projected to become the highest-grossing tour in history by the end of this year, forecast to push Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour into second place.
Plus, the Swift magic touch has boosted the local economies her tour has passed through.
Economic angel with the power to shake cities
Her seven sold-out concerts in Sydney and Melbourne in Australia in February were credited by the Australian Bureau of Statistics with increasing spending on clothing, merchandise, accessories and dining out across the month.
Six nights near Los Angeles added $320m (£257m) and 3,300 jobs to the area, according to the California Center for Jobs and the Economy.
And not content with ruling the music world or mending the economy, she has conquered the silver screen too, with a movie version of her concert tour taking over $250m (£200m) in ticket sales.
The movie generated the highest ticket sales at the UK and Ireland box office on its opening day, according to Vue International.
And did I mention, she can also cause minor natural disasters?
In July 2023, a Swift concert in Seattle was pointed to for setting off a nearby seismometer, registering the equivalent of a magnitude 2.3 earthquake.
She’s across politics and sport too – and fellow celebs love her
While never telling her fans who to vote for, Swift has encouraged voter registration, with Vote.org reporting 35,000 signups after Swift urged her 282 million followers on Instagram to vote in Super Tuesday primary contests across the US in March.
And putting the super into Super Bowl, her high-profile relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce has been credited with bringing more viewers to American Football. Indeed, sales of Kelce jerseys jumping 400% in one day, according to online seller Fanatics.
While she never went to college herself, numerous US colleges offer courses on her, including Harvard, Stanford and Bentley, while a university in Belgium offers a Swift-inspired literary class. Avoiding the hassle of years of study, in 2022 she received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from New York University.
And earlier this year the Victoria And Albert Museum recruited for a Taylor Swift superfan adviserto help develop future Swift-themed programming.
Known for her dedication to her fans – inspiring friendship bracelets, handmade signs, and all sorts of memorabilia – she has a legion of celebrity fans too including Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts and Adam Sandler.
This summer she will play 15 UK shows as part of her Eras Tour, kicking off on 7 June in Edinburgh before coming to London on 21 June. Her extended London run will conclude at Wembley Stadium on 20 August.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.
Ms Wilson bought her most recent ticket at Family Food Mart in the US town of Mansfield and the shop will receive a $10,000 (£7,900) bonus for its sale of the ticket, according to the Massachusetts State Lottery.
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She bought her first $1m winning ticket at Dubs’s Discount Liquors in the same town.
President Joe Biden has spoken out for the first time following violence and arrests during demonstrations at multiple US universities, saying: “There is a right to protest but not a right to cause chaos.”
Tensions at universities across America have been building for days as demonstrators have refused to remove encampments and administrators have called in law enforcement to break them up.
There have been clashes between pro-Palestinian activists and counter-protesters, as well as between demonstrators and police.
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Police attempt to disperse UCLA students
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Police make arrests at UCLA protest
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Mr Biden said events at the universities “put to the test two fundamental American principles, the first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble, the second is the rule of law”.
“Both must be upheld”, the president continued. “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent. But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society. And order must prevail.”
He added: “Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or denying the rights of others so students can’t finish the semester and college education.”
Mr Biden has at times criticised Israel’s conduct in its war in Gaza, but the US has continued to supply it with weapons.
The president said the protests have not prompted him to rethink policies relating to the Middle East.
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His remarks came after days of silence about the protests. During this time, Republicans have tried to use the scenes of unrest against the Democrats.
Mr Biden said he rejected efforts to use the situation to “score political points”. “This isn’t a moment for politics,” he said. “It’s a moment for clarity.”
Hundreds of protesters arrested
Overnight, police arrested pro-Palestinian protesters on multiple campuses, including at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where officers in riot gear fired rubber bullets at demonstratorsand tore down an encampment that had been in place for a week.
Between 200 and 300 people were arrested at UCLA on Wednesday night, two law enforcement sources told Sky’s US partner NBC News.
Specific information on those arrested – such as whether they were students, staff or not affiliated with the university – may not be known for days.
The cost of the two-night operation to secure the campus and remove the encampment is in the multiple millions of dollars, they added.
Other arrests were made at the University of Texas, Yale, Dartmouth, and the New York State universities at Buffalo and Stony Brook.
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Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop working with Israel, or companies they say support the war on Gaza, have spread across the US.
Another prominent demonstration at Columbia University in New York was broken up by police on Tuesday night, with around 300 arrests being made.