Few artists in the history of pop music have had a year like Taylor Swift. The singer, who turns 35 today, started off 2024 as the most prominent spectator at the Super Bowl, where Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs delivered on a romcom ending. Her blockbuster Eras Tour, showcasing 18-plus years of music over a staggering 3.5 hours, continued 2023’s run as pop’s main story overseas and became the best-selling music tour in history. Her 11th studio album, the Tortured Poets Department, may have been a misfire with critics (myself included), but still broke streaming records and dominated the charts; she was Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally this year. The Eras Tour wrapped last weekend in Vancouver with more than $2bn in ticket sales from more than 10 million attendees – more than double the next all-time highest-grossing tour, in only 149 shows.
In short, Swift is operating in exceedingly rare company, at a scale unimaginable to most artists. Her closest pop peer is arguably Beyoncé, whose only standard and point of comparison is herself. (Both also, notably, rarely grant interviews.) Which raises the question: after a remarkable run of both ubiquity and good press, after the genuinely mind-boggling and commerce-shifting success of the Eras Tour, what next?
First and foremost, at least according to an “exclusive” source at People, is rest, and enjoying the holidays with her boyfriend/Eras tour staple Travis Kelce. And beyond that, a question of where to go when you’re already at the top, especially as Swift’s golden era was also a banner year for a new, younger wave of female artists raised on her music, including Chappell Roan and Eras Tour openers Sabrina Carpenter and Gracie Abrams.
Before the all-consuming Eras Tour, Swift indicated a pivot toward film, having sold an original script to Searchlight Pictures in 2022, which she is also expected to direct. Details of the film have been kept tightly under wraps, other than it being an “exciting and new creative journey”, according to Searchlight heads David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield.
Swift has previously directed or co-directed 13 music videos and All Too Well: The Short Film, a 15-minute extended music video treatment starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. The short film garnered some awards season recognition, with Swift expressing an interest in expanding her repertoire as a director. “I think that I’m at a place now where the next baby step is not a baby step. It would be committing to making a film,” she said during a discussion at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival, in which she also said she wanted to tell “human stories about human emotion” going to a “more comedic, irreverent place”.
Swift would follow a long line of pop stars who moved to film after success in the music business – particularly in their 30s. Lady Gaga was nominated for an Oscar in 2019 for A Star Is Born. Both Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande are in awards contention this year for their performances in Emilia Pérez and Wicked, respectively. Charli xcx, Swift’s former tour opener (in 2018, for Reputation) whose mainstream takeover with Brat summer was arguably the pop story of the year, has publicly announced her intention to step back from music and focus on acting, with several roles on the calendar. (“It’s a knife when you’re finally on top, ’cause logically the next step is they want to see you fall to the bottom,” she and Grande sing on the remix of Sympathy Is a Knife, a track originally thought to be about Swift that was redone following Brat’s success; the industry is small and anxious.)
It’s too soon to tell whether Swift, who has always emphasized storytelling as the center of her career, will also seek to appear in front of the camera. Typically – as much as “typical” exists in the rarefied world of pop – artists seeking a next step from music or the grind of touring move to residencies (think Adele’s stay in Vegas), behind-the-scenes mentorship or extended hiatus. But Swift is famously productive – she has released five studio albums in as many years – so there’s also the possibility of more new music. Swifties have made a cottage industry out of reading the “clues” for the fan-coveted re-recordings of Reputation and Swift’s 2006 debut album, dates for which have yet to be announced.
Swift has kept plans close to her chest, part of a longstanding effort to surprise fans. None of them would begrudge her time off. But she, by her own admission, loves to work. “I’m happier when I’m making things more often,” she told Martin McDonagh during a Directors on Directors chat two years ago. So while her next step is anyone’s guess, best to bet on something.