Taylor Swift continues to rewrite the rules, coming in at No. 1 on Billboard’s Power 100 list. Not only is this the first time that she’s topped the list, but it’s the just the second time any artist has crowned Billboard’s annual ranking of the most impactful music industry executives and power players (Jay-Z and Beyoncé topped Billboard‘s 2014 Power 100 list).
Swift, of course, has come in at No. 1 on a cornucopia of Billboard charts before this, topping the Billboard Hot 100 11 times, the Billboard 200 13 times, the Hot Country Songs chart nine times and Pop Airplay 12 times. She was named Woman of the Year twice (2014 and 2011) at Billboard’s annual Women in Music event, and was celebrated as the Woman of the Decade at Billboard Women in Music 2019.
In the latest issue of Billboard, Swift offered a peek into her business acumen, sharing some advice for anyone looking to follow in her trailblazing path. “The piece of advice I would give to the other executives on this list is that the best ideas are usually ones without industry precedent,” Swift told Billboard. “The biggest crossroads moments of my career came down to sticking to my instincts when my ideas were looked at with skepticism. When someone says to me, ‘But that has never been done successfully before,’ it fires me up. We have to take strategic risks every day in this industry, but every once in a while, you have to really trust your gut and take a flying leap. My rerecordings are my favorite example of this, and I’m extremely grateful to my team and fans for taking that leap with me because it absolutely changed my life.”
As Billboard’s Melinda Newman, executive editor, West Coast and Nashville, points out in her Power 100 list entry on Swift, those words are particularly salient in an industry where “instinct has largely been supplanted by metrics and data analysis.”
Read Taylor Swift’s full Power 100 list entry here and see who else is on the list.
Swift’s record-shattering Eras Tour picks up its international run on Feb. 7 in Tokyo, the first of four Tokyo Dome dates.
