Taylor Swift Was the Top-Earning Female Entertainer of the Decade
Taylor Swift had a better decade than (almost) everyone. According to Forbes, the 30-year-old was the highest-earning female entertainer of the decade, bringing in an estimated $825 million over the last 10 years.
Overall, Swift was the second highest-earning entertainer, coming in just behind Dr. Dre, who raked in an estimated $950 million due to his stake in the headphone company, Beats, which Apple purchased in 2014 for $3 billion. (It only takes into account living celebrities; As Forbes noted, had it added in Michael Jackson, he’d easily rank as first considering his estate pulled in an estimated $2.37 billion over the last decade.)
According to the outlet, Swift earned the second-place spot because just about everyone loves her music. Her millions reportedly came from her multiplatinum albums, her brand partnerships, and several sold-out tours. But the singer’s accomplishments went far beyond making money. In December, Swift was also honored with Billboard‘s first-ever Woman of the Decade Award. She was chosen due to her massive influence on music and pop culture, which we here at Glamour recognized as well.
“Taylor isn’t the first country artist to dabble in pop—both Shania Twain and Faith Hill have done it, to varying degrees—but she is the first to do it in its totality. And, along the way, she broke new ground,” Glamour writer Christopher Rosa penned. “When she dropped ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ and ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ in 2012, for example, top 40 radio short-circuited. Both songs were stunning, seamless marriages of genres: country, pop, rock, even elements of dubstep. It was a precursor, if not the jumpstart, to the genre-bending hits that would define the latter half of the decade.”
Beyond music, in the last decade, Swift also became a crusader for the rights of artists. In December of 2019, Swift publicly called out mega-manager, Scooter Braun, who acquired her back catalog of music as part of his purchase of Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group. Swift, who was once under the Big Machine label, said she “pleaded” to purchase her music back from Borchetta, however, Borchetta only said she could “earn” back one album for each new one she produced.