Has public opinion turned against Taylor Swift?

It’s been a busy week for the world’s biggest popstar. 

At the Grammy Awards, Taylor Swift became the first artist to win the Album of the Year award four times when she won for her 2022 album ‘Midnights’. As she received the historic award, she announced her 11th album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ which is set for release in April this year.

Swift’s Grammy moment seemed to be the apotheosis of a year spent entirely in ascent.

In 2023, Swift was the Time Person of the Year, released two more re-recordings of earlier albums, performed the highest-grossing tour of all time, and became a billionaire.

She also made Euronews Culture's Top Person of the Year for Music. Dwarfs the rest, right?

Yet on social media, there’s a distinct smell in the air. Whereas criticism of one of the world’s biggest-selling artists has previously been quashed by accusations of misogyny or plain mean-spiritedness, suddenly my timelines were filled with complaints.

The first was quite straightforward. Swift’s Grammy win may have been positively significant to her personally, but it was symbolic to many of the continued erasure of Black – and particularly Black female – artists. A Black woman hasn’t won album of the year since Ms. Lauryn Hill did in 1999. Of the nominees, SZA’s ‘SOS’ is certainly a more interesting album than Swift’s ‘Midnights’ and Jay-Z rightly alluded to the continued oversight of his wife Beyoncé’s output.

While the Grammys may have rankled some, most are aware it’s a naval-gazing industry award that has never been that representative of quality. In other words, it’s not that important. The real crux of the backlash that Swift is now facing seems to be pointed more generally at her sudden standing as a cultural behemoth.

Pre-2020,