The California sun drenched me in the backseat of the car while my dad drove and my mom rode shotgun. It was just the three of us on that day in the late-2000s, and I had the rare luxury of playing whatever CD I chose, which, inevitably, is Taylor Swift’s self-titled debut album. Often, we drove without music. My dad preferred conversation or silence in the car, aside from on road trips when he played old country hits or his favorite music from the eighties. If my brothers were in the car, no one would agree on what to listen to. 

My parents weren’t “music people.” No one in my family played instruments or devoted their attention to specific artists or attended concerts. I was an outlier, obsessing over songs and performers and enjoying music in a way that many teenagers do, connecting to the emotions within a melody or lyric. Singing along helped carry the feelings I buried and didn’t yet know how to process. I latched onto Taylor Swift in middle school, drawn to the heightened emotions she conveyed through her music––the yearning represented by a rousing orchestral interlude, the brave confessions, the unabashed truth of what she felt and longed for and grieved. The music was a gateway to vulnerability, to both experiencing the feelings and sharing them with another human. I’d begun teaching myself chords on the upright piano in our living room that was handed down to us by my parents’ friends. I started writing songs when I was twelve, in the same year Taylor’s first album was released, just before I became aware of who she was. After seeing her “Tim McGraw” music video, I asked for my own guitar, too. 

I stared out the window, brooding, letting the sun warm my face. Track six began, with its quick drum pattern and upbeat guitar strum, leading the listener into what sounded like a happy-go-lucky country tune. It’s an intro that conjures feelings of loneliness followed by an embrace even to this day. I wasn’t alone. 

I sang along quietly when the chorus started. 

How can I ever try to be better? Nobody ever lets me in. 

I can still see you; this ain’t the best view on the outside looking in… 

The music was a gateway to vulnerability, to both experiencing the feelings and sharing them with another human.

I was fifteen and friendless. I’d started homeschooling that year because I didn’t fit into my small, Christian private school, which had become a toxic environment rife with gossip and bullying. I spend most of my time alone, in my room, writing song lyrics and reading books, imagining what it would be like to be in another place or another time––or to be another person. But there was this other teenage girl like me, somewhere across the country, singing about being on the outside and wanting so badly to be inside, and if no one else understood, at least she did. I’ve been a lot of lonely places; I’ve never been on the outside. 

My mom asked me, without turning around, “Is that how you feel?” 

“Yeah,” I answered quietly. 

It was rare for my parents to acknowledge uncomfortable feelings and even more rare that I shared them openly. That girl with curly, blonde hair––five years older than me, like an older sister I wished I had––singing to us through the car speakers, gave me the words to express what I couldn’t. 

Until, one day, I’d learn to understand and express those feelings on my own. 

Fast forward to now, fourteen years later. Ten new albums and three re-released albums added to Swift’s repertoire alongside the self-titled debut I was listening to in the car. Multiple world tours and films, a billion-dollar empire. The country singer who guided me through young adulthood is now a household name, embarking on a record-breaking stadium tour around the world celebrating the various eras of her career. 

I couldn’t get tickets when they went on pre-sale and Ticketmaster fumbled, leaving millions of hopeful fans wanting. With resale tickets going for thousands of dollars, the Eras Tour was out of my budget. I wrestled with the disappointment for the months leading up to her May 2023 tour dates at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. For three years I’d been declaring that I would spend the money necessary to see her on stage again, the last time having been ten years prior on the Red Tour. I monitored the Eras Tour Resale account on Twitter where fans sold their extra tickets at face value. I reached out to every connection I had in New York that would possibly have access to affordable tickets. I stalked StubHub and VividSeats daily. Nothing materialized in my price range. 

On the day of the first show at MetLife Stadium, Ticketmaster released tickets they’d ostensibly been holding back, and though I couldn’t get my hands on any of those either, secondhand tickets appeared on the resale sites for less than they had been before, and I jumped. They were just inside the budget I’d set for myself. The thought of missing the chance to see her on stage, on this tour, was unbearable, so I completed the order, gulped upon seeing the Apple Pay notification on my phone screen, and jumped on the subway to get home and quickly change. The show would start in four hours, and in three I was packed onto a New Jersey Transit car with hundreds of other concert-goers dressed in outfits ranging from 2000s country chic to brightly-colored crop top and skirt matching sets to the denim and pastel hues of the Lover era. 

Taylor Swift is no longer on the outside, I thought. And, apparently, neither am I. 

She was never branded for the cool girls. She was a self-proclaimed outcast with charm and a cuteness factor, perfectly fit for those of us with a penchant for dramatic flair, old souls who were disillusioned with adolescence, believing that one day our daydreams would become reality. Somehow, over time, the patron saint of uncool girls became popular, became a billionaire, became the queen of mass media. What does this say to us, the other uncool girls? We no longer have to be on the outside. In fact, rubbing shoulders with the world’s elite alongside the nerdiest of Taylor Swift fans, it’s almost as if there’s no outside at all.

The patron saint of uncool girls became popular, became a billionaire, became the queen of mass media. What does this say to us, the other uncool girls? We no longer have to be on the outside.

When she first appears on stage at MetLife, I almost cry. It’s surreal, seeing her in the flesh and being surrounded by tens of thousands of people sharing the experience with me. When she re-enters the stage for her second set in a sparkly gold dress and begins singing “Fearless,” it almost comes as a shock to me that the same person on stage is the one who first sang this song my freshman year of high school. I named that first guitar of mine “Fearless” because it was the first song I learned how to play. 

In the same way I look back at photos of myself at that time––heavy eyeliner, hair straightened with a flatiron, layered tank tops, baby face––and have to remind myself that it’s the same girl as the one looking back at me in the mirror today, I have to remind myself that this Taylor is that Taylor. We’ve both grown up, and she now commands football-stadium-sized crowds that sing along to the songs that defined my lonely teenage years. 

How did this happen? For a long time, it didn’t feel fashionable to be a Taylor Swift fan. I remember having to convince people to give her a chance, especially if they weren’t fans of country music, and then, as she transitioned into pop music, having to defend her when others would write her off, throwing out eye rolls and insults whenever I brought her up. Though her rise to fame was initially pretty quick and she was already selling out concert dates on her first headlining tour (which I still couldn’t get affordable tickets for), her popularity was not always universal, her name not always ubiquitous. Now, everywhere I turn, someone is calling themself a Swiftie, wearing her face on a t-shirt, or proudly claiming a favorite era. My co-worker, the bartender, a Hinge date, the person behind me in line at a coffee shop, every corporate social media account in existence. Loving Taylor Swift is in vogue, a facet of our culture. The feet of millions running to secure tickets to see her on tour stomp Ticketmaster into dust, movie ticket sales to her concert film break records, her arrival in any given American city boosts the local economy, and NFL jersey sales for her new beau rise 400% overnight. Even the NFL loves Taylor Swift. Anyone who has been paying attention might wonder how she’s obtained such a widespread and devoted following. “What is it about Taylor Swift?” I’m often asked. “What makes her different from any other artist?” 

My instinct as an OG Swiftie is to harp on about her songwriting. “It’s her music,” I’ll say. “She’s a master storyteller. Just listen to her lyrics.” But there are––and have been––plenty of great singer-songwriters with greater vocal talent and equally captivating stage presence. The question isn’t simply, Why is she so popular? It’s also, Why is the effect she has on her fans and the public so intense? There is a feral, contagious enthusiasm for Taylor Swift and the universe she rules, which is a universe she has constructed over the last eighteen years. 

Those of us who’ve been around to witness her rise from the beginning will remember the secret messages she shared in the lyrics printed in her debut album booklet (and the albums following), in which she’d capitalize certain letters throughout the lyrics to create a word or phrase that would give the reader a clue about the song’s inspiration or meaning. Some messages seemed to be addressed to no one in particular, or to us, the audience. Some were clearly meant for the subject of each song, whether or not that person would ever see it. In the booklet’s lyrics for “Should’ve Said No,” she embeds a name repeated three times: SAM SAM SAM. We didn’t know who Sam was (this was before she dated public figures), but we knew the boy who didn’t say no to the other girl was Sam and we were shaking our heads in disappointment along with her. We also knew Drew, her unrequited crush, and Cory, the beautiful boy she hoped would show up on her doorstep one day. 

One might also recall the Fearless Tour in 2009––her first headlining tour––and the moment in every show she would disappear from the stage, materialize in the back of the venue, and hug as many fans as she could, continuing on with the hugs as she walked through the crowd and back up to the stage to sing, “All those other girls, well, they’re beautiful, but would they write a song for you?” (The song, “Hey Stephen,” was addressed to Stephen Barker Liles of the band Love and Theft.) It was pre-Instagram, pre-TikTok, and only the earliest stages of Twitter––before everyone had a video-capturing phone in their pocket and live streamed each show on social media. Those in the back rows, who’d thought they missed out on the good seats, were the lucky ones, touched by Taylor Swift herself, and never saw it coming. 

There is a feral, contagious enthusiasm for Taylor Swift and the universe she rules, which is a universe she has constructed over the last eighteen years. 

On the same tour, she began hosting T-Parties––meet and greet experiences following each show in a room outfitted with foosball and ping pong tables, a television, a sound system, and tables of food. Her mom, Andrea, who was present at all her concerts along with her father, hand-selected fans from the audience, often from the back rows or nosebleeds, to join Taylor and other fans after the show. This tradition continued on through her next four tours, later rebranding as Club Red, Loft1989, and Rep Room. (Up until the Rep Room experience, fans were allowed to take their own photos, but rules changed during the Reputation Tour and phones were prohibited once Taylor entered the room, likely in response to her growing fame and the measures she took at the time to secure greater privacy.) Eventually, Taylor began seeking out the lucky fans herself on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, “stalking” them for months to learn more about their personal details before having her Taylor Nation team reach out. 

This was also the method she employed to invite fans to what she called “Secret Sessions.” In the weeks leading up to the release of her 1989 album in 2014, Taylor chose a few hundred fans to attend listening parties of the record in her homes in New York City, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Rhode Island, as well as her hotel room in London. (The experience was replicated for new sets of fans during the releases of Reputation and Lover.) Fans joined her to listen to the yet-to-be-released album in full, hear her stories about making the album, exchange conversation, give hugs, take photos, and eat pizza. Taylor baked everyone cookies. 

Her deep, extensive engagement with fans throughout the years not only made way for but also bred the fandom that exists today. The intimacy she’s developed with her listeners is unprecedented. Though she may have a whole team of undoubtedly well-paid marketing experts and idea-generators who help plan events, weave the ever-developing tapestry of her persona, and exploit anything the fans deem significant in the Swift-universe, there is no doubt that Taylor herself is the engine. After all, she is a self-proclaimed mastermind in an effort to win affection. 

Most rock stars achieve their star status on a pedestal; we look up at them with admiration, aspiring to be them or to win them. Taylor Swift flips that script; she’s someone who is like you, like your friends, like your girlfriend or your ex, a daughter, a granddaughter, a sister. Not only has this approach made her, a larger than life figure, seem like a peer––someone who might be your bestie had you occupied the same space at some point in life––it’s also created a pathway for real friendships to be made, for acquaintances to feel connected. It’s provoked strangers to make and exchange friendship bracelets with each other at her Eras Tour concerts, to collectively decipher her codes and secret messages online. Should someone on the outside show curiosity about a theory or tidbit of knowledge from the Swift-universe, an omniscient Swiftie will be eager to explain––in extensive, dizzying detail––its backstory, interpretation, and importance. 

And there are hundreds––maybe thousands––of tales, theories, and predictions to sift through when it comes to the Swift-universe. The lore attached to both her persona and body of work is a significant differentiator between Taylor Swift and other popular artists. When I think of other phenomena that have yielded the type of fanbase that Taylor Swift has, the Harry Potter franchise comes to mind. Those who grew up with the Harry Potter books and films, who are intimately acquainted with its whole bible––characters, language, interconnected storylines––have a similar fervor to those who can sing every Taylor Swift lyric with each inflection perfectly in place, who know what person in Taylor’s history each song is speculated to be written about, who remember every Easter egg she’s hidden, outfit she’s worn, and phrase she’s used or coined. (The T-Parties, Secret Sessions, and Tumblr interactions are part of that lore.)

There are visual and verbal markers of each era that cement its impression on the community, rousing 70,000 people to scream simultaneously upon seeing the singer twirl around with a guitar in a sparkly gold dress, for instance. In other words, Taylor Swift and her creative universe is itself like a franchise. Like Harry Potter fans who enter the Wizarding World, Taylor Swift fans are similarly invited into the world she’s created with its own characters, dictionary, and paraphernalia. One fan created a fantasy map of fifty locations, referencing lines from Taylor’s songs, places from her past, and structures from elsewhere in her creative universe (Champagne Sea, Bluebird Café, the Lover House).

The Taylor Swift lore extends from real life facts and events–– both what she’s shared personally and what the media has captured––to song references, fan theories, and promotional schemes. In an encyclopedia on the Swift-universe, pages of content would likely populate for “track five,” the number thirteen, or the image of a snake––the latter detailing the origin and meaning behind the imagery used to define her reputation era. The aesthetics associated with each of her albums and corresponding eras––colors, outfits, imagery, themes––are iconic within the fandom, playing to both nostalgia and marketing opportunities.

Before literal characters emerged in her songs on the pandemic-era albums folklore and evermore (Rebekah, Augustine, Betty and James, Dorothea, Este, the Cowboys), there were versions of Taylor and the men she dated who populated the theater of each song she sang. Though she’s most well-known for writing biographical accounts of her life experiences, she’s a storyteller at heart. In a voice memo included on the original release of 1989, Taylor talks to Jack Antonoff, whose musical track she is penning lyrics for, explaining the story she’s writing: “It’s kind of about this guy who’s, like, he’s driving down the street in the middle of the night and he passes his ex-girlfriend’s house and it’s like, he thinks she hates him, but she’s still in love with him. Very dramatic.” Many of her songs offer a glimpse into her own experiences; some offer a glimpse into her imagination. Her music videos through the years––many she herself wrote and directed, with multimillion-dollar budgets––paint vivid pictures of the songs they portray, like four-minute short films. The release of All Too Well’s ten-minute version in 2021 yielded an actual short film that played in movie theaters. In a post-MTV world, where music videos were no longer in fashion, Taylor Swift committed to the full multimedia experience. Her videography has its own Wikipedia page. 

Delving into Taylor Swift lore with other fans is akin to reminiscing with a friend about past phases of one’s own life. We’ve witnessed her life unfold from a distance and have attached our own associations to various songs, albums, and corresponding eras. We remember the scarf and the plaid shirts with the illusion of being comrades during her love and heartbreak because she let us in, and we have our own memories of what that period was like for us. 

My teenage years may have been marred by gossipy, toxic peers, but Taylor Swift was a shining jewel in that era of my own life. Alone in my bedroom, I’d sing along to “Mean,” vowing to move to the big city and leave the mean kids behind. I’d dream of kissing in the rain, of boys with green eyes and firm handshakes, of taking back my power after heartbreaks of all sorts. To this day, my best friend will comment that I’m always in a better mood when I’m listening to Taylor Swift music. Though I always veered toward melancholia, the singer’s presence in my teens quite possibly pushed back the onset of the chronic depression that first appeared at twenty years old. 

Recently, therapist Suzanne Garfinkle-Crowell explored the increased mention of Taylor Swift in her therapy sessions with clients, wondering what about her affected her fans so deeply. “Swiftmania is a very different kind of high from what I experienced listening to music as a teenager,” Garfinkle-Crowell writes. “It’s not just the plethora of songs to discover but the nonstop Swiftie culture itself—the constant access to the music, the news, the scrolling for swag, the shoutouts on the street, the sharing of songs and lines of poetic code via text or passed bracelet––a party that is raging all day and night.” 

It’s a party that anyone can join at any time. Her fanbase is multigenerational, inclusive of every creed, race, gender identity, political affiliation, and class. At the start of her career, her reach was limited to those who enjoyed country music or a little twang in their tunes. Her subject matter, though lyrically rich, was inclined toward the longings and declarations of teenage girls––she herself having been only sixteen when her first album was released. In the last decade and a half, as she’s expanded her repertoire thematically, by genre, and with a range of collaborators (just take a glance at the range of guests she brought on stage with her during her 1989 Tour), the door has opened wide enough that almost anyone anywhere can find and connect to something she’s written. Even in prison her music resonated, Joe Garcia writes in The New Yorker, describing how it struck a chord in his own life, in his thirties, during his darkest days. 

“Whatever you are upset about,” Garfinkle-Crowell goes on to explain, “the poet laureate of this generation has got a song somewhere in her mega-oeuvre describing a precise feeling. She is not going to solve whatever problem you are having, but she is going to sit with you in it until the passage of time does its work: Look at her now.” 

She is not going to solve whatever problem you are having, but she is going to sit with you in it until the passage of time does its work

With her latest release, The Tortured Poets Department, a 31-song autobiographical marathon that dips a toe into the waters of oversharing, we learned that even Taylor Swift, a billionaire star in her mid-thirties, is prone to unfavorable situationships, being ghosted, and a failed long-term relationship that couldn’t offer long-term commitment. Referencing her song “The Black Dog,” memes online draw attention to the relatability of watching an ex slip into a bar after forgetting to turn his location sharing off, and, subsequently, spiraling. However, Taylor Swift always gets the final word, and she won’t stay down for long. 

Longtime fans and casual listeners alike can run to one of Taylor Swift’s 230-plus songs and find solace in the expression of some familiar emotion or sentiment, despite the singer-songwriter never generalizing when she writes her lyrics. At her concerts, no matter the seat, one can feel like a pinprick of light amongst 70,000 other glistening stars––part of a massive and unifying collective––while experiencing the intimate embrace of a song that’s held them, lifted them, seen them through their own highs and lows. A song being sung to and for them alone by Taylor Swift, accompanied by thousands of other voices.

It’s a phenomenon Amanda Petrusich recently wrote about in her New Yorker article describing the Eras Tour: “Swift sees each of us (literally––we were given light-up bracelets upon entering) and wants us to know it.” Along with visibility, there’s the “savvy use of what feels like the singular ‘you’” when Taylor addresses the crowd at her concert––and in her captions on social media, I’ll add. It falls in line with the arm she’s previously extended to her fans, through hugs and parties and cookies. Though untouchable and far away, she feels close. 

Toward the tail end of what we might think of as the pandemic era, as restrictions were lifting and life was returning to some sense of normal, before the Eras Tour and the inescapable Taylor Swift news cycle, I was discussing change with my own therapist over Zoom. It was a notable period of transition for the world as a whole, and I was feeling a wild shift in my own life. At the onset of the pandemic, I had been trying to change careers––an attempt cut short by the world falling into disarray. Several months later, having returned to my old job, I was struggling to find my way back to the pursuit of something new after feeling I had regressed and lost all momentum. Confused and entangled in a couple rocky situationships (one with a man and one with my job), I sat in front of my therapist on the laptop screen at a loss for what to do and how to process what I was feeling. 

She introduced an activity: Choose anyone in the world, whether you know them personally or not, dead or living, and have an imagined conversation with them about what you’re experiencing. What would they say to you? What might their advice be? She asked me to set the scene, and I described a cozy room adorned with wood flooring, a soft rug, and a couch I could sink into. Maybe there would be instruments around, candles, soft light spilling in from a window, and rain. Then she asked me who I’d invite to hang out with me in this room. 

“This is going to sound weird,” I began. 

“That’s okay,” she assured. “Whoever comes to mind, go with that.” 

“I would want to talk to Taylor Swift.” 

She smirked. “Usually I find that when someone starts by saying, ‘This is going to sound weird, but…’ it’s the thing that’s going to make the most sense.” 

We role-played the scene. What would I ask her? What might she tell me? Why was she the one I wanted to talk to? 

“She’s reinvented herself multiple times,” I said. “When she wants to try something new, she does. When something’s not working, she changes it. She catches herself people-pleasing and then she learns how to do her own thing. I think she would tell me, ’It might not work; sometimes it doesn’t. Try it anyway.’” 

Taylor Swift has experienced her share of heartbreak and betrayal, of trial and error, and has established herself as one who rises again and again with unlimited reserves of inspiration, passion, and dedication, as the imperfect perfectionist, as the hopeless romantic. She took the media’s harsh comments––about her voice, her relationships, her dance moves, her personality––and capitalized on it, rather than let it defeat her. She keeps going. Even in her early songs it’s evident: she’s always known her worth, regardless of anyone or anything that tries to diminish it. I didn’t want to pretend-chat with a person who made it look easy, who had figured it out, to tell me how. I wanted to talk to the person who had narrated her life alongside my own for over a decade, always a few steps ahead of me, to tell me it would be okay, to keep going, to be fearless and unapologetic, to know who I am and own it. 

A year later, I’d be sitting not in a cozy little room conjured by my own imagination but in the stands at Yankee Stadium, during New York University’s graduation ceremony for the class of 2022, listening to Taylor give the commencement speech and hearing similar words to those I had been yearning to hear in that therapy session, as if she was answering all the questions I imagined I’d ask her. As if she heard me. 

She does listen, after all. Dialogue between her and her fans, as a community, is common. She reads; she watches. Playing piano on stage at her Eras Tour, she opened her evermore era set by responding to some fans’ claims online that she dismisses the album (“an album I love despite what some of you all say on TikTok”). The Easter eggs she’s been hiding in her work for years, transmitting coded messages to the Swifties, has been a way to engage millions of people through her own numerology and strategy. The fans have learned her thinking patterns and tactics, and she is acutely aware of how they, consequently, behave in response. Last summer, fans who banded together across social media correctly predicted that she would announce the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) at her last show in Los Angeles at the end of the first U.S. leg of the tour, noting it would be the nineteenth week of the tour on August ninth (19-8-9). It can get out of hand, with fans making outlandish demands of her and believing she owes them something, but she keeps millions of people involved, creating that illusion of closeness despite the fact that most of us are not very close to her at all.

In the novel Touch by Courtney Maum, its protagonist, Sloane, a trend forecaster for technology and consumer habits, becomes restless and uneasy with society’s growing obsession with and dependence on screens and gadgets. As the story progresses, it occurs to her that there will be backlash, that the culture will flip in response to the lack of genuine connection and physical touch, craving proximity and engagement. “She could envision,” the book describes, “…a movement in which people paid a premium for more contact, not less.” Maum’s tale is shockingly prescient, considering it arrived three years before the pandemic and a months-long quarantine that stripped us all of the in-person interactions we learned we had been taking for granted. Suddenly, we were fatigued by our screens and alone time. We craved face-to-face dinners, conversations with strangers, hugs, gatherings, live performances. Intimacy. 

“You think the future belongs to the type of people who are going to sync their fridges with their smartphones,” Sloane says in a meeting at her company Mammoth (a tech company not unlike Amazon or Apple), “but people are ready––not tomorrow, but now––to be vulnerable and undirected and intimate again.” The Millennial and Gen-Z generations have enacted their own backlash against a culture that preceded ours, in which feelings were suppressed (or woefully redirected to substance abuse and other unhealthy behaviors), therapy was taboo, and vulnerability was viewed as weakness. Taylor Swift and her lyrics, her bare-it-all storytelling and heart-on-sleeve-wearing persona, arose at a perfect time to usher in the kind of self-expression our society was craving. Following the pandemic, a period of isolation and incongruity, the desire for self-expression was joined by a greater hunger for that expression to be shared. We longed to be in a room with others who felt the same as we did, or could at least understand our experiences. 

I find myself wondering if that’s why I spent two thousand dollars I didn’t have to be at the Eras Tour, though I could watch up-close, high-definition videos of each song she performed on my iPhone from my couch for free. Or why concert-goers waited in hours-long lines to buy t-shirts and hoodies. Or why Taylor Swift still––successfully––sells copious copies of physical CDs and vinyl records despite the easy accessibility of music through streaming services. It could be our society’s rampant consumerism, or it could be that these tangible experiences provide the notion of intimacy included with the entire Taylor Swift package. It could be that Taylor Swift sees dollar signs attached to each new venture, or it could be that she is just as hungry for that connection––aware of the bridge it creates between her and the millions of people who want to be close to her, to be embraced. 

From growing up a self-proclaimed unpopular girl on “the outside” to effectively erasing the notion of an outside, Taylor Swift has steadily created a universe where seemingly everyone can belong. In a world that feels increasingly isolated––where we struggle to show vulnerability, to build and maintain friendships, to grieve, to love––Taylor Swift and her creative universe lead us through the joy, pain, confusion, and beauty of living and loving alongside others and models that herself. One might chalk up her efforts as clever chess moves or audacious grabs at more power, money, and fame, but regardless of her motivation, she’s garnered a level of attention and devotion that few, if any, performers have in such mass. 

In a song off 2022’s album, Midnights, she sings that she “searched the party of better bodies just to learn that [her] dreams aren’t rare.” Maybe they’re not, but there is plenty of rarity that has set her apart. We compare her success to that of Beyoncé or The Beatles, measuring her feats against other artists who have reached astronomic heights and broken records. We marvel at the waves she makes in the entertainment industry, but what she’s built extends far beyond entertainment. She offers something other artists don’t, and arguably never have before. 

I’ll reframe her crooning question to Stephen and ask you: All those other stars, well, they’re wonderful, but would they invite you to their house and bake for you?