Year in review photos: How 2022 was for music idol Taylor Swift

As soon as Taylor Swift released her new single, “Anti-Hero” in October, an upbeat track that is essentially a list of her insecurities, listeners zeroed in on one lyric: “Sometimes I feel like everybody is a... baby, and I’m a monster on the hill.” This song (a possible “30 Rock” reference?) sent social media into meme overdrive, but the most telling part was Swift’s description of herself as a “monster on the hill.” It is fitting: Over the past 16 years, Swift, 33, has become so famous that her mere presence is simply all-consuming, the rare figure that manages to dominate pop culture at all times.

During a time in which so many millennial music stars struggle to sustain momentum in their careers, she maintains an unbreakable hold on our increasingly fractured world - and its discourse - in a way that almost no one else can.

“Midnights” shattered sales records. It’s rare for a basic-cable award show to make news these days, but the MTV Video Music Awards caught a lucky break when Swift chose her video of the year acceptance speech in August to drop the surprising news that she would be releasing her 10th studio album, “Midnights,” a couple months later.

Swift loves nothing more than being on theme, so at midnight following the VMAs - where she was photographed at an after-party wearing a midnight navy dress covered in sparkling stars - she announced on Instagram that the album would centre on “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.”

Ticketmaster reached its breaking point: Earlier this year, BTS fans were furious when Ticketmaster sold out the K-pop superstar group’s presale tickets so fast that they cancelled the general admission sale. Several months later, Bruce Springsteen loyalists experienced serious sticker shock through Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” model, causing prices to skyrocket. But those were just appetisers for the outrage that exploded in the aftermath of the presale for Swift’s Eras Tour, a 52-date stadium tour kicking off in March and “a journey through the musical eras” of Swift’s country and pop career. In mid-November, Ticketmaster opened its virtual doors for the first crack at tickets, only to be swarmed with what the company later said was 3.5 billion system requests, four times its previous peak. There were glitches, hours-long limbo in the “virtual waiting room” and the eventual cancellation of the general admission sale. The company released a statement calling Swift an “unstoppable force” and simultaneously blamed “a staggering number of bot attacks” for the chaos.

Live Nation’s chairman pointed to the “massive demand” for Swift concerts and claimed that she could have sold out “900 stadiums.” Unfortunately for Ticketmaster, which has long been a source of frustration for concertgoers thanks to its dominance in the online ticket market, the rage from Swift fans was so intense that it sparked a lawsuit and caught the attention of several lawmakers.

Damon Albarn regretted his life choices: What was Blur and Gorillaz singer Damon Albarn thinking in January when he confidently told the Los Angeles Times that Swift doesn’t write her own songs? No one may ever know, but he soon came to regret it. When pop music critic Mikael Wood pushed back during their Q&A and explained that Swift writes or co-writes all of her music, Albarn responded, “That doesn’t count. I know what co-writing is. Co-writing is very different to writing. I’m not hating on anybody, I’m just saying there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes.”

So she wasn’t going to let this one slide: “I was such a big fan of yours until I saw this,” Swift fired back in a tweet. “I write ALL of my own songs. Your hot take is completely false and SO damaging. You don’t have to like my songs but it’s really [expletive] up to try and discredit my writing. WOW.”

Her (self) mythology continued to grow People make jokes about the Taylor Swift Cinematic Universe, but it’s also not even really a joke. Since her debut country album in 2006, Swift has carefully and steadily built her own mythology, embedding puzzles and hints about the true meaning of her work in album liner notes and sprinkling clues about her life in social media posts and videos.

She reminded everyone to embrace the cringe: As the Swiftian history tells us, Swift’s experience as an unpopular teenager shaped much of her worldview, as her earliest songs focus on the insecurity and angst she often felt at school.

Up next: her auteur era: Swift started occasionally directing her own music videos a few years ago and then took things up a notch with the “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” short film, the cinematic adaptation of the standout ballad on Swift’s rerecorded “Red” album.”