Are you ready for it? Taylor Swift has officially been named Time‘s 2023 Person of the Year. The 33-year-old performer was announced as this year’s winner on Wednesday’s Today show.
Time‘s Editor-in-Chief, Sam Jacobs, shared the news with Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie.
“Picking one person who represents the eight billion people on the planet is no easy task… There are a number of different choices that could have represented 2023 but we picked a choice, someone who represents joy,” Jacobs said of Swift. “Someone who’s bringing light to the world, someone who’s taken her own story and made it big enough for everyone. And I don’t think there’s anyone who’s moved so many people so well as Taylor Swift did in 2023.”
Of the “Anti-Hero” singer’s influence in 2023, Jacobs added, “She was like the weather. She was everywhere.”
Swift has a total of three covers for the Person of the Year honor, including one of her holding her cat, Benjamin Button.
Part of that influence was Swift’s headline-making Eras tour and concert film, not to mention the rerelease of her hit album, 1989.
For Time, Swift gives her first magazine interview in four years, talking about her success, her struggles, and what it’s like dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.
“I’ve been raised up and down the flagpole of public opinion so many times in the last 20 years,” Swift says. “I’ve been given a tiara, then had it taken away.”
She adds of her current superstar moment, “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been.”
Swift also reveals more about the timeline of her now-public romance with Kelce.
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she tells the magazine. “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.”
Swift notes that she and Kelce are focused on showing their support for one another.
“We’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she shares. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
In addition to the Time honor, Swift also became the first entertainer to make it into the top 5 of Forbes‘ World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list, earning the no. 5 spot.
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