Culture Crash: Whether You’re A Swiftie Or Not, Here’s What We Can All Agree On

Everyone knows by now that it has been the year of Taylor Swift. Since the Eras tour launched last March, the Taylor Swift experience has been non-stop. She’s released new music videos, started dating Travis Kelce, unveiled new vault tracks, won Album of the Year at the Grammys and now.. She has a new album coming. For all the talk of her celebrity and her personal life, though, it can be easy for some to forget that she reached her level of fame the old fashioned way: unrelenting work ethic.

Swift released her first album in 2006, following up with new albums every two years through 2014 when she released her 5th album, called 1989. The 6th took her 3 years, then the 7th album Lover, came in 2019, which is when she entered another level of music creation. Because less than a year after she released Lover, she released Folklore. Later that same year came Evermore. Less than two years later came Midnights and now, less than two years since then, she has her 11th full-length album, The Tortured Poets Department, set to release on April 19. 

But of course, that’s not all. After a contract dispute, she is also famously working to re-release new versions of her first six albums. So far, she’s re-released four of them, and every time she puts one out, she also puts out previously unreleased vault songs, and so far she’s put out 26 of them.

In total, it has meant Taylor Swift fans have never had to go years on end without the hint of new music from their fav. Sometimes watching an NFL game, you’ll hear the familiar groan of an impatient man “Why do they show Taylor Swift? What has she ever done?” **The answer is simple: Since 2006, she’s made 11 full-length albums, soundtrack songs for The Hunger Games and Fifty Shades franchises, the highest-grossing tour of all time, and she’s acted in a few movies for good measure. Love her or hate her, that’s up to you, but you can’t say she doesn’t work hard. Taylor Swift is a grinder, and The Tortured Poets Department is just the latest proof.

I also thought Rachel McAdams was spectacular in Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?, Penelope Cruz was a force in Ferrari, and the technical craft all over David Fincher’s The Killer was the best of the best. But in the end, there are only so many nominations to go around. Art isn’t made to win awards, and despite their lack of nominations, movies like All of Us Strangers and Air will stick with me long after the Oscars come and go.