Taylor Swift
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the album, see Taylor Swift (album).
Taylor Swift
Portrait of Taylor Swift in a cocktail dress
Swift at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards
Born Taylor Alison Swift
December 13, 1989 (age 33)
West Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupations
Singer-songwriterproducerdirectorbusinesswomanactress
Years active 2004–present
Works
Albumssinglessongsvideosperformances
Relatives
Austin Swift (brother)
Marjorie Finlay (grandmother)
Awards Full list
Musical career
Origin Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.
Genres
Popcountryfolkrockalternative
Instrument(s)
Vocalsguitarbanjopianoukulele
Labels
RepublicBig Machine
Website taylorswift.com
Signature
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Recognized for her songwriting, musical versatility, artistic reinventions, and influence on the music industry, she is a prominent cultural figure of the 21st century.
Swift began professional songwriting at age 14 and signed with Big Machine Records in 2005 to become a country singer. She released six studio albums under the label, four of them to country radio, starting with her 2006 self-titled album. Her next, Fearless (2008), explored country pop, and its singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me" catapulted her to prominence. Speak Now (2010) infused rock influences, while Red (2012) experimented with electronic elements and featured Swift's first Billboard Hot 100 number-one song, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together". She departed from her country image with 1989 (2014), a synth-pop album supported by the chart-topping songs "Shake It Off", "Blank Space", and "Bad Blood". Media scrutiny inspired the hip-hop-flavored Reputation (2017) and its number-one single "Look What You Made Me Do".
After signing with Republic Records in 2018, Swift released the pop album Lover (2019) and autobiographical documentary Miss Americana (2020). She embraced indie folk and alternative rock on 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore, explored chill-out styles on Midnights (2022), and undertook her Taylor's Version album re-recording project following a dispute with Big Machine. In the process, she earned the number-one singles "Cruel Summer", "Cardigan", "Willow", "Anti-Hero", "All Too Well" and "Is It Over Now?". In 2023, Swift embarked on the Eras Tour and released its accompanying concert film. She has also directed music videos and films such as All Too Well: The Short Film (2021).
With over 200 million records sold globally, Swift is one of the best-selling musicians. She is the most-streamed woman on Spotify and Apple Music, the highest-grossing female performer and the first billionaire with music as the main source of income, and has been featured in lists such as Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, Billboard's Greatest of All Time Artists, the Time 100, and Forbes Celebrity 100. Among her accolades are 12 Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, 40 American Music Awards, 29 Billboard Music Awards, 23 MTV Video Music Awards, three IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year awards, and 101 Guinness World Records. Honored as Artist of the Decade by the American Music Awards and Woman of the Decade by Billboard, Swift is an advocate for artists' rights and women's empowerment.
Life and career
Early life
Swift's childhood home in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989,[1] in West Reading, Pennsylvania.[2] She is named after singer-songwriter James Taylor.[3] Her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, is a former stockbroker for Merrill Lynch[4] and her mother, Andrea Gardner Swift (née Finlay), is a former homemaker who previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive.[5] Taylor has a younger brother, actor Austin Swift,[6] and is of Scottish,[7] German, and Italian descent.[8][9] Their maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, was an opera singer.[10]
Swift spent her early years on a Christmas tree farm that her father had purchased from one of his clients.[11][12] She is a Christian.[13] She attended preschool and kindergarten at Alvernia Montessori School, a Montessori school run by the Bernadine Franciscan sisters,[14] before transferring to the Wyndcroft School.[15] The family moved to a rented house in the suburban town of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania,[16] where Swift attended Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School.[17] She spent summers in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, until she was 14 years old, performing in a local coffee shop.[18][19]
At age nine, Swift became interested in musical theater and performed in four Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions.[20] She also traveled regularly to New York City for vocal and acting lessons.[21] Swift later shifted her focus toward country music, inspired by Shania Twain's songs, which made her "want to just run around the block four times and daydream about everything".[22] She spent weekends performing at local festivals and events.[23][24] After watching a documentary about Faith Hill, Swift felt she needed to move to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in music.[25] She traveled there with her mother at age eleven to visit record labels and submitted demo tapes of Dolly Parton and Dixie Chicks karaoke covers.[26] She was rejected, however, because "everyone in that town wanted to do what I wanted to do. So, I kept thinking to myself, I need to figure out a way to be different."[27]
When Swift was around 12 years old, computer repairman and local musician Ronnie Cremer taught her to play guitar. "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer was the first song Swift learned to play. Cremer helped with her first efforts as a songwriter, leading her to write "Lucky You".[28][29] In 2003, Swift and her parents started working with New York–based talent manager Dan Dymtrow. With his help, had an original song included on a Maybelline compilation CD, and met with major record labels.[30] After performing original songs at an RCA Records showcase, Swift, then 13 years old, was given an artist development deal and began making frequent trips to Nashville with her mother.[31][32][33] To help Swift break into the country music scene, her father transferred to Merrill Lynch's Nashville office when she was 14 years old, and the family relocated to Hendersonville, Tennessee.[11][34] Swift attended Hendersonville High School[35] before transferring to Aaron Academy after two years, which better accommodated her touring schedule through homeschooling. She graduated one year early.[36]
2004–2008: Career beginnings and first album
In Nashville, Swift worked with experienced Music Row songwriters such as Troy Verges, Brett Beavers, Brett James, Mac McAnally, and the Warren Brothers[37][38] and formed a lasting working relationship with Liz Rose.[39] They began meeting for two-hour writing sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school.[40] Rose called the sessions "some of the easiest I've ever done. Basically, I was just her editor. She'd write about what happened in school that day. She had such a clear vision of what she was trying to say. And she'd come in with the most incredible hooks." Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house,[41] but left then BMG-owned RCA Records (later bought by Sony Music) at the age of 14 due to the label's lack of care and them "cut[ting] other people's stuff". She was also concerned that development deals can shelve artists[33][24] and recalled: "I genuinely felt that I was running out of time. I wanted to capture these years of my life on an album while they still represented what I was going through."[42]
Taylor Swift singing on a microphone and playing a guitar
Swift opening for Brad Paisley in 2007. To promote her first album, she opened tours for other country musicians in 2007 and 2008.[43]
At an industry showcase at Nashville's Bluebird Cafe in 2005, Swift caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, a DreamWorks Records executive who was preparing to form an independent record label, Big Machine Records. She had first met Borchetta in 2004.[44] She was one of Big Machine's first signings,[33] and her father purchased a three-percent stake in the company for an estimated $120,000.[45][46] She began working on her eponymous debut album with producer Nathan Chapman, with whom she felt she had the right "chemistry".[24] Swift wrote three of the album's songs alone and co-wrote the remaining eight with Rose, Robert Ellis Orrall, Brian Maher, and Angelo Petraglia.[47] Taylor Swift was released on October 24, 2006.[48] Country Weekly critic Chris Neal deemed Swift better than previous aspiring teenage country singers because of her "honesty, intelligence and idealism".[49] The album peaked at number five on the U.S. Billboard 200, on which it spent 157 weeks—the longest stay on the chart by any release in the U.S. in the 2000s decade.[50] Swift became the first female country music artist to write or co-write every track on a U.S. platinum-certified debut album.[51]
Big Machine Records was still in its infancy during the June 2006 release of the lead single, "Tim McGraw", which Swift and her mother helped promote by packaging and sending copies of the CD single to country radio stations.[52] As there was not enough furniture at the label yet, they would sit on the floor to do so.[52] She spent much of 2006 promoting Taylor Swift with a radio tour, television appearances; she opened for Rascal Flatts on select dates during their 2006 tour,[53] as a replacement for Eric Church.[54] Borchetta said that although record industry peers initially disapproved of his signing a 15-year-old singer-songwriter, Swift tapped into a previously unknown market—teenage girls who listen to country music.[52][11]
Following "Tim McGraw", four more singles were released throughout 2007 and 2008: "Teardrops on My Guitar", "Our Song", "Picture to Burn" and "Should've Said No". All appeared on Billboard's Hot Country Songs, with "Our Song" and "Should've Said No" reaching number one. With "Our Song", Swift became the youngest person to single-handedly write and sing a number-one song on the chart.[55] "Teardrops on My Guitar" reached number thirteen on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.[56] Swift also released two EPs, The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection in October 2007 and Beautiful Eyes in July 2008.[57][58] She promoted her debut album extensively as the opening act for other country musicians' tours in 2006 and 2007, including those by George Strait,[59] Brad Paisley,[60] and Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.[61]
Swift won multiple accolades for Taylor Swift. She was one of the recipients of the Nashville Songwriters Association's Songwriter/Artist of the Year in 2007, becoming the youngest person to be honored with the title.[62] She also won the Country Music Association's Horizon Award for Best New Artist,[63] the Academy of Country Music Awards' Top New Female Vocalist,[64] and the American Music Awards' Favorite Country Female Artist honor.[65] She was also nominated for Best New Artist at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.[66] In 2008, she opened for Rascal Flatts again,[67] and dated singer Joe Jonas briefly.[68][69]
2008–2010: Fearless and acting debut
Taylor Swift in 2009
Swift at the 2009 premiere of Hannah Montana: The Movie. She had a cameo appearance in the film and wrote two songs for its soundtrack.[70][71]
Swift's second studio album, Fearless, was released on November 11, 2008, in North America,[72] and in March 2009 in other markets.[73] Critics lauded Swift's honest and vulnerable songwriting in contrast to other teenage singers.[74] Five singles were released in 2008–2009: "Love Story", "White Horse", "You Belong with Me", "Fifteen", and "Fearless". The first single peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one in Australia.[56][75] It was the first country song to top Billboard's Pop Songs chart.[76] "You Belong with Me" was the album's highest-charting single on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number two,[77] and was the first country song to top Billboard's all-genre Radio Songs chart.[78] All five singles were Hot Country Songs top-10 entries, with "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me" topping the chart.[79] Fearless became her first number-one album on the Billboard 200 and 2009's top-selling album in the U.S.[80] The Fearless Tour, Swift's first headlining concert tour, grossed over $63 million.[81] Journey to Fearless, a documentary miniseries, aired on television and was later released on DVD and Blu-ray.[82] Swift also performed as a supporting act for Keith Urban's Escape Together World Tour in 2009.[83]
In 2009, the music video for "You Belong with Me" was named Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.[84] Her acceptance speech was interrupted by rapper Kanye West,[85] an incident that became the subject of controversy, widespread media attention and Internet memes.[86] That year she won five American Music Awards, including Artist of the Year and Favorite Country Album.[87] Billboard named her 2009's Artist of the Year.[88] She won Video of the Year and Female Video of the Year for "Love Story" at the 2009 CMT Music Awards, where she made a parody video of the song with rapper T-Pain called "Thug Story".[89] At the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, Fearless was named Album of the Year and Best Country Album, and "White Horse" won Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Swift was the youngest artist to win Album of the Year.[note 1] At the 2009 Country Music Association Awards, Swift won Album of the Year for Fearless and was named Entertainer of the Year, the youngest person to win the honor.[92]
Swift featured on John Mayer's single "Half of My Heart" and Boys Like Girls' "Two Is Better Than One", the latter of which she co-wrote.[93][94] She co-wrote and recorded "Best Days of Your Life" with Kellie Pickler,[95] and wrote two songs for the Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack—"You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home" and "Crazier".[71] She contributed two songs to the Valentine's Day soundtrack, including the single "Today Was a Fairytale", which was her first number-one on the Canadian Hot 100 and peaked at number two on the U.S. Hot 100.[96][97] While shooting her film debut Valentine's Day in October 2009, Swift dated co-star Taylor Lautner.[98] In 2009, she made her television debut as a rebellious teenager in an CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode.[99] She hosted and performed as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live; she was the first host ever to write their own opening monologue.[100][101]
2010–2014: Speak Now and Red
Swift singing into a mic while playing a banjo
Swift performing at the Speak Now World Tour in 2012
In August 2010, Swift released "Mine", the lead single from her third studio album, Speak Now. It entered the Hot 100 at number three.[102] Swift wrote the album alone and co-produced every track.[103] It was released on October 25, 2010,[104] opening atop the Billboard 200 with over one million copies sold.[105] It became the fastest-selling digital album by a female artist, with 278,000 downloads in a week.[106] Critics appreciated Swift's grown-up perspectives;[107] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone wrote, "in a mere four years, the 20-year-old Nashville firecracker has put her name on three dozen or so of the smartest songs released by anyone in pop, rock or country."[108] "Back to December", "Mean", "The Story of Us", "Sparks Fly", and "Ours" became subsequent singles, with the latter two reaching number one on the Hot Country Songs[79] and the first two peaking in the top ten in Canada.[97] She dated actor Jake Gyllenhaal in 2010.[109]
At the 54th Annual Grammy Awards in 2012, Swift won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance for "Mean", which she performed during the ceremony.[110] Swift won other awards for Speak Now, including Songwriter/Artist of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association (2010 and 2011),[111][112] Woman of the Year by Billboard (2011),[113] and Entertainer of the Year by the Academy of Country Music (2011 and 2012)[114] and the Country Music Association in 2011.[115] At the American Music Awards of 2011, Swift won Artist of the Year and Favorite Country Album.[116] Rolling Stone named Speak Now amongst its "50 Best Female Albums of All Time" (2012), writing: "She might get played on the country station, but she's one of the few genuine rock stars we've got these days, with a flawless ear for what makes a song click."[117]
The Speak Now World Tour ran from February 2011 to March 2012 and grossed over $123 million,[118] followed up by the live album, Speak Now World Tour: Live.[119] She contributed two original songs to The Hunger Games soundtrack album: "Safe & Sound", co-written and recorded with the Civil Wars and T-Bone Burnett, and "Eyes Open". "Safe & Sound" won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.[120][121] Swift featured on B.o.B's single "Both of Us", released in May 2012.[122] She dated Conor Kennedy that year.[123]
Taylor Swift on the Red Tour
Swift on the Red Tour (2013)
In August 2012, Swift released "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", the lead single from her fourth studio album, Red. It became her first number one in the U.S. and New Zealand,[124][125] and became the fastest-selling single in digital history.[126] Other singles from the album were "Begin Again", "I Knew You Were Trouble", "22", "Everything Has Changed", "The Last Time", and "Red". "I Knew You Were Trouble" reached the top five on charts in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.[127] "Begin Again", "22", and "Red" reached the top 20 in the U.S.[56] On Red, released on October 22, 2012,[128] Swift worked with Chapman and Rose, as well as the new producers Max Martin and Shellback.[129] It incorporated many pop and rock styles such as heartland rock, dubstep and dance-pop.[130] Randall Roberts of Los Angeles Times said Swift "strives for something much more grand and accomplished" with Red.[131] It opened at number one on the Billboard 200 with 1.21 million sales, making Swift the first female to have two million-selling first-weeks.[132][133] Red was Swift's first number-one album in the U.K.[134] It earned several accolades, including four nominations at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards (2014).[135] Swift received American Music Awards for Best Female Country Artist in 2012, Artist of the Year in 2013,[136][137] and the Nashville Songwriters Association's Songwriter/Artist Award for the fifth and sixth consecutive years.[138] The Red Tour ran from March 2013 to June 2014 and grossed over $150 million, becoming the highest-grossing country tour ever.[139] Swift was honored with the Pinnacle Award, making her the second recipient of the accolade after Garth Brooks.[140] During this time, she briefly dated English singer Harry Styles.[141]
In 2013, Swift recorded "Sweeter than Fiction", a song she wrote and produced with Jack Antonoff for the One Chance soundtrack. The song received a Best Original Song nomination at the 71st Golden Globe Awards.[142] She provided guest vocals for Tim McGraw's song "Highway Don't Care", also featuring Keith Urban.[143] Swift performed "As Tears Go By" with the Rolling Stones in Chicago, Illinois, as part of the band's 50 & Counting tour,[144] and joined Florida Georgia Line at their set at the 2013 Country Radio Seminar to sing "Cruise".[145] Swift voiced Audrey in the animated film The Lorax (2012),[146] made a cameo in the sitcom New Girl (2013),[147] and had a supporting role in the dystopian film The Giver (2014).[148]
2014–2018: 1989 and Reputation
See also: Taylor Swift sexual assault trial
Swift performing on a mic, dressed in a blue skirt
Swift at the 1989 World Tour, the highest-grossing tour of 2015
In March 2014, Swift began living in New York City.[note 2] She hired Tree Paine as her publicist,[151] and worked on her fifth studio album, 1989, with producers Jack Antonoff, Max Martin, Shellback, Imogen Heap, Ryan Tedder, and Ali Payami.[152] She promoted the album extensively, including inviting fans to secret album-listening sessions.[153] 1989 was released on October 27, 2014, and opened atop the Billboard 200 with 1.28 million copies sold.[154] Its singles "Shake It Off", "Blank Space" and "Bad Blood" reached number one in Australia, Canada and the U.S., the first two making Swift the first woman to replace herself at the Hot 100 top spot;[155] other singles include "Style", "Wildest Dreams", "Out of the Woods" and "New Romantics".[156] The 1989 World Tour (2015) was the highest-grossing tour of the year with $250 million in total revenue.[157]
Prior to 1989's release, Swift stressed the importance of albums to artists and fans.[158] In November 2014, she removed her entire catalog from Spotify, arguing that the streaming company's ad-supported, free service undermined the premium service, which provides higher royalties for songwriters.[159] In a June 2015 open letter, Swift criticized Apple Music for not offering royalties to artists during the streaming service's free three-month trial period and stated that she would pull 1989 from the catalog.[160] The following day, Apple Inc. announced that it would pay artists during the free trial period,[161] and Swift agreed to let 1989 on the streaming service.[162] She then returned her entire catalog plus 1989 to Spotify, Amazon Music and Google Play and other digital streaming platforms in June 2017.[163] Swift was named Billboard's Woman of the Year in 2014, becoming the first artist to win the award twice.[164] At the 2014 American Music Awards, Swift received the inaugural Dick Clark Award for Excellence.[165] On her 25th birthday in 2014, the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live opened an exhibit in her honor in Los Angeles that ran until October 4, 2015, and broke museum attendance records.[166][167] In 2015, Swift won the Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist.[168] The video for "Bad Blood" won Video of the Year and Best Collaboration at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards.[169] At the 58th Grammy Awards (2016), 1989 won Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album, making Swift the first woman and fifth act overall to win Album of the Year twice.[170]
Swift wearing a sparkling blazer singing on a mic
Swift on her Reputation Stadium Tour (2018), the highest-grossing North American tour of all time
Swift dated Scottish DJ Calvin Harris from March 2015 to June 2016.[171] They co-wrote the song "This Is What You Came For", featuring vocals from Barbadian singer Rihanna; Swift was initially credited under the pseudonym Nils Sjöberg.[172] In April 2016, Swift criticized the lyrics of West's single "Famous", in which he sings "I made that bitch famous" in reference to his interruption of her acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. West claimed he had received her approval for the line, and his then-wife Kim Kardashian released video clips of Swift and West discussing the single amicably over the phone; a full recording of the call leaked in 2020 established that West did not disclose that he would call her a bitch.[173][174]
After briefly dating English actor Tom Hiddleston,[175] Swift entered a six-year relationship with English actor Joe Alwyn in September 2016.[176][177][178] She wrote the song "Better Man" for country band Little Big Town,[note 3] which earned her the Song of the Year award at the 51st CMA Awards.[180] Swift and English singer Zayn Malik released the joint single "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" for Fifty Shades Darker: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2017). The song reached number two in the U.S.[181] In August 2017, Swift successfully countersued David Mueller, a former radio jockey for KYGO-FM, who sued her for damages from his loss of employment. Four years earlier, she informed Mueller's bosses that he had sexually assaulted her by groping her at an event.[182]
After a one-year hiatus from public spotlight, Swift cleared her social media accounts and released "Look What You Made Me Do" as the lead single from her sixth album, Reputation.[183][184] The single was Swift's first U.K. number-one single.[185] It topped charts in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the U.S.[186] Reputation, released on November 10, 2017,[187] incorporated heavy electropop, along with hip hop, R&B, and EDM sounds.[188] Reviews praised Swift's mature artistry, but some denounced the themes of fame and gossip.[189] The album opened atop the Billboard 200 with 1.21 million sales, making Swift the first act to have four albums sell one million copies in a week in the U.S.[190] The album topped the charts in the UK, Australia, and Canada,[191] and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide as of 2018.[192] It spawned three more singles: "...Ready for It?",[193] "End Game" (featuring Ed Sheeran and rapper Future) and "Delicate".[156] Reputation was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards in 2019.[194] At the American Music Awards of 2018, Swift won four awards, including Artist of the Year and Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist. Swift had garnered collected 23 AMAs in her career, becoming the most awarded female musician in the show, surpassing Whitney Houston.[195] In April 2018, Swift featured on country duo Sugarland's "Babe".[note 4] She embarked on her Reputation Stadium Tour in 2018.[197] It broke many records, such as the highest-grossing North American concert tour in history with $345.7 million revenue worldwide.[198] It was followed up with an accompanying concert film on Netflix.[199]
2018–2020: Lover, Folklore, and Evermore
See also: Taylor Swift masters dispute
Reputation was Swift's last album under Big Machine. In November 2018, she signed a new deal with the Universal Music Group; her subsequent releases were promoted by Republic Records. Swift said the contract included a provision for her to maintain ownership of her masters. In addition, in the event that Universal sold any part of its stake in Spotify, it agreed to distribute a non-recoupable portion of the proceeds among its artists.[200] Vox called it a huge commitment from Universal, which was "far from assured" until Swift intervened.[201]
A portrait of Swift
Swift at the American Music Awards of 2019, where she was named Artist of the Decade
Swift released her seventh studio album, Lover, on August 23, 2019.[202] Besides Jack Antonoff, Swift worked with new producers Louis Bell, Frank Dukes, and Joel Little.[203] Lover made Swift the first female artist to have a sixth consecutive album sell more than 500,000 copies in one week in the U.S.[204] Critics commended the album's free-spirited mood and emotional intimacy.[205][206] The lead single, "Me!", peaked at number two on the Hot 100.[207] Other singles from Lover were the U.S. top 10 singles "You Need to Calm Down" and "Lover", top 40 single "The Man",[56] and "Cruel Summer", which became a resurgent success in 2023 and reached number one on the Hot 100.[208] Lover was the world's best-selling album by a solo artist of 2019, selling 3.2 million copies,[209] and along with its singles earned nominations at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020.[210] At the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, "Me!" won Best Visual Effects, and "You Need to Calm Down" won Video of the Year and Video for Good. Swift was the first female and second artist overall to win Video of the Year for a video that they directed.[211]
While promoting Lover, Swift became embroiled in a public dispute with talent manager Scooter Braun and Big Machine over the purchase of the masters of her back catalog.[212] Swift said she had been trying to buy the masters, but Big Machine would only allow her to do so if she exchanged one new album for each older one under new contract, which she refused to sign.[212][213] Swift began re-recording her back catalog in November 2020.[214] Besides music, she played Bombalurina in the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats (2019), for which she co-wrote and recorded the Golden Globe-nominated original song "Beautiful Ghosts".[215][216] Critics panned the film but praised Swift's performance.[217] The documentary Miss Americana, which chronicled parts of Swift's life and career, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released on Netflix that January.[218][219] Swift signed a global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group in February 2020 after her 16-year-old contract with Sony/ATV expired.[220]
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Swift released two surprise albums: Folklore on July 24, and Evermore on December 11, 2020.[221][222] Both explore indie folk and alternative rock with a more muted production compared to her previous upbeat pop songs.[223][224] Swift wrote and recorded the albums with producers Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner from the National.[225] Alwyn co-wrote and co-produced select songs under the pseudonym William Bowery.[226] The albums garnered widespread critical acclaim. The Guardian and Vox opined that Folklore and Evermore emphasized Swift's work ethic and increased her artistic credibility.[227][228] Three singles supported each of the albums, catering the U.S. mainstream radio, country radio, and triple A radio. The singles, in that order, were "Cardigan", "Betty", and "Exile" from Folklore, and "Willow", "No Body, No Crime", and "Coney Island" from Evermore.[229] Swift became the first artist to debut a U.S. number-one album and a number-one song at the same time with Folklore's "Cardigan" and Evermore's "Willow".[230] Folklore was 2020's best-selling album in the U.S. with 1.2 million copies.[231] It won Album of the Year at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, making Swift the first woman to win the award thrice.[232] At the 2020 American Music Awards, she won three awards, including Artist of the Year for a record third consecutive time.[233] According to Billboard, she was 2020's highest-paid musician in the U.S., and the world's highest-paid solo musician.[234]
2021–present: Re-recordings, Midnights, and the Eras Tour
See also: 2022 Ticketmaster controversy and Impact of the Eras Tour
Swift singing into a mic
Swift on the Eras Tour (2023)
Following the masters dispute, Swift released re-recordings of her first six studio albums, beginning with Fearless (Taylor's Version) and Red (Taylor's Version) in April and November 2021, respectively. Both releases peaked atop the Billboard 200,[235] becoming the first ever re-recorded albums to do so.[236] Fearless (Taylor's Version) was preceded by "Love Story (Taylor's Version)", which made her the second artist after Dolly Parton to have both the original and re-recorded versions of a song reach number one on the Hot Country Songs chart.[237] Red (Taylor's Version) was supported by "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)", which became the longest song in history to top the Hot 100.[238] The song was accompanied by a short film, which won a Grammy Award for Best Music Video[239] and Swift's record third MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.[240]
Swift's tenth studio album, Midnights, was released on October 21, 2022.[241] Experimenting with chill-out music,[242] it received critical acclaim; Rolling Stone critics dubbed it an instant classic.[243][244] The album was Swift's fifth to open atop the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of over one million copies and broke various sales and streaming records,[245] including the most U.S. first-week vinyl sales and the most single-day streams and most single-week streams on Spotify.[246] Its tracks, led by the single "Anti-Hero", monopolized the entire top 10 of the Hot 100, making Swift the first artist to do so.[247] Two other singles, "Lavender Haze" and "Karma", both peaked at number two on the Hot 100.[248] Swift won nine awards at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year ("Anti-Hero") for a record fourth time.[249] She embarked on the Eras Tour in March 2023. Media outlets extensively covered the tour's cultural and economic impact,[250] and its U.S. leg broke the record for the most tickets sold in a day.[247] Ticketmaster received public and political criticisms for mishandling ticket sales and alleged monopoly in the concert industry.[251] A concert film of the tour, released to theaters worldwide on October 13, 2023, became the highest-grossing concert film ever.[252]
Swift continued releasing her re-recorded albums during the Eras Tour. Speak Now (Taylor's Version) was released on July 7, 2023, and made Swift the woman with the most number-one albums (12) in Billboard 200 history, surpassing Barbra Streisand.[253] 1989 (Taylor's Version) was released on October 27, 2023, and became Swift's record-extending sixth album to sell one million copies in a single week in the U.S.[254] The best-selling album of 2023, it surpassed Midnights to become the largest album sales week of her career and garnered the most U.S. first-week vinyl sales of the 21st century.[254] Its single "Is It Over Now?" debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making Swift the first woman to replace herself at the summit twice.[255]
Beyond her albums, Swift featured on five songs from 2021 to 2023: "Renegade" and "Birch" by Big Red Machine,[256] a remix of "Gasoline" by Haim,[257] "The Joker and the Queen" by Ed Sheeran,[258] and "The Alcott" by the National.[259] For the soundtrack of the 2022 film Where the Crawdads Sing, she recorded "Carolina", which received nominations for Best Original Song at the Golden Globes and Best Song Written for Visual Media at the Grammy Awards.[260] Swift's music releases, touring, and related activities culminated in an unprecedented height of popularity post-pandemic.[261] Music Business Worldwide remarked that she entered a "new stratosphere of global career success".[262] Outside of music, she had a supporting role in the 2022 period comedy Amsterdam and has ventured into directing an upcoming feature film under Searchlight Pictures.[263][264] She began dating American football player Travis Kelce during the 2023 NFL season.[265]
Artistry
Influences
One of Swift's earliest memories of music is listening to her grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, sing in church.[5] As a child, she enjoyed Disney film soundtracks: "My parents noticed that, once I had run out of words, I would just make up my own."[266] Swift said she owes her confidence and "fascination with writing and storytelling" to her mother, who helped her prepare for class presentations as a child.[267][268]
Swift was drawn to the storytelling aspect of country music,[269] introduced to the genre by "the great female country artists" of the 1990s—Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and the Dixie Chicks.[270][271] Twain, both as a songwriter and performer, was her biggest musical influence.[272] Hill was Swift's childhood role model, as she would often imitate her.[273] She admired the Chicks' defiant attitude and ability to play their own instruments,[274] and was also influenced by older country stars like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton,[23] the last of whom she believes is exemplary to female songwriters.[113] As a songwriter, Swift was influenced by Joni Mitchell's emotional and autobiographical lyrics, highlighting Mitchell's album Blue as a favorite "because it explores somebody's soul so deeply."[275] She also spoke of influence from 1990s songwriters such as Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette,[276][277] and alt-country artists like Patty Griffin[278] and Lori McKenna.[279]
Various pop and rock artists have also influenced Swift. She lists Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, and Kris Kristofferson as her career role models.[11][280] 1989 was influenced by some of her favorite 1980s pop acts, including Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Phil Collins, and Madonna.[281][282] She also cited Keith Urban's musical style and Fall Out Boy's lyrics as major influences.[283][284]
Genres
"If there's one thing that Swift has proven throughout her career, it's that she refuses to be put in a box. Her ever-evolving sound took her from country darling to pop phenom to folk's newest raconteur."
—The Recording Academy, 2021[285]
Swift is known for venturing into various music genres and undergoing artistic reinventions,[286][264] having been described as a "music chameleon".[287][288] She self-identified as a country musician until 2012, when she released her fourth studio album, Red.[289] Her albums were promoted to country radio, but music critics noted wide-ranging styles of pop and rock.[290][291] After 2010, they observed that Swift's melodies are rooted in pop music, and the country music elements are limited to instruments such as banjo, mandolin, and fiddle, and her slight twang;[292][293] some commented that her country music identity was an indicator of her narrative songwriting rather than musical style.[294][295] Although the Nashville music industry was receptive of Swift's status as a country musician, critics accused her of abandoning her roots in favor of crossover success in the mainstream pop market.[296][297] Red's eclectic pop, rock, and electronic styles intensified the critical debate, to which Swift responded, "I leave the genre labeling to other people."[298]
Music journalist Jody Rosen commented that by originating her musical career in Nashville, Swift made a "bait-and-switch maneuver, planting roots in loamy country soil, then pivoting to pop".[299] She abandoned her country music identity in 2014 with the release of her synth-pop fifth studio album, 1989. Swift described it as her first "documented, official pop album".[300] Her subsequent albums Reputation (2017) and Lover (2019) have an upbeat pop production; the former incorporates hip hop, trap, and EDM elements.[301][302][303] Midnights (2022), on the other hand, is distinguished by a more experimental, "subdued and amorphous pop sound".[304][305] Although reviews of Swift's pop albums were generally positive, some critics lamented that the pop music production indicated Swift's pursuit of mainstream success, eroding her authenticity as a songwriter nurtured by her country music background—a criticism that has been retrospectively described as rockist.[306][307] Musicologist Nate Sloan remarked that Swift's pop music transition was rather motivated by her need to expand her artistry.[308] Swift eschewed mainstream pop in favor of alternative, folk and indie rock styles with her 2020 studio albums Folklore and Evermore.[309][310] Clash said her career "has always been one of transcendence and covert boundary-pushing", reaching a point at which "Taylor Swift is just Taylor Swift", not defined by any genre.[311]
Voice
"All Too Well (10 Minute Version)"
Duration: 31 seconds.0:31
Music theory professor Alyssa Barna called Swift's lower register cadences "full and dark", as seen in "All Too Well" (2021).[224]
"Cruel Summer"
Duration: 18 seconds.0:18
Whereas, her upper register is "breathy and bright", as depicted by the hook of "Cruel Summer" (2019).[224] Kelsey Barnes of The Line of Best Fit mentions Swift's falsetto as one of her vocal signatures.[312]
Problems playing these files? See media help.
Swift possesses a mezzo-soprano vocal range,[313] and a generally soft but versatile timbre.[314][315] As a country singer, her vocals were criticized by some as weak and strained compared to those of her contemporaries.[316] Swift admitted her vocal ability often concerned her in her early career and has worked hard to improve.[317] Reviews of her vocals remained mixed after she transitioned to pop music with 1989; critics complained that she lacked proper technique but appreciated her usage of her voice to communicate her feelings to the audience, prioritizing "intimacy over power and nuance".[318] They also praised her for refraining from correcting her pitch with Auto-Tune.[319]
The Los Angeles Times remarked that Swift's defining vocal feature is her attention to detail to convey an exact feeling—"the line that slides down like a contented sigh or up like a raised eyebrow".[320] With Reputation, critics noted she was "learning how to use her voice as a percussion instrument of its own",[321] swapping her "signature" expressive vocals for "cool, conversational, detached" cadences and rhythms similar to hip hop and R&B styles.[322][323][324] Alternative Press stated that her "evocative" vocal stylings are more reminiscent of pop-punk and emo genres.[325]
Reviews of Swift's later albums and performances were more appreciative of her vocals, finding them less nasal, richer, more resonant, and more powerful.[293][326][327] With Folklore and Evermore, Swift received praise for her sharp and agile yet translucent and controlled voice.[328][329][330] Pitchfork described it as "versatile and expressive".[331] With her 2021 re-recorded albums, critics began to praise the mature, deeper and "fuller" tone of her voice.[332][333][334] An i review said Swift's voice is "leagues better now" with her newfound vocal furniture.[335] The Guardian highlighted "yo-yoing vocal yelps" and passionate climaxes as the trademarks of Swift's voice,[336] and that her country twang faded away.[337] Midnights received acclaim for Swift's nuanced vocal delivery.[338] She ranked 102nd on the 2023 Rolling Stone list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.[315] In a review of the Eras Tour, The New Yorker critic Amanda Petrusich praised the clarity and tone of Swift's live vocals.[339]
Songwriting
Further information: List of songs by Taylor Swift
Swift has been referred to as one of the greatest songwriters of all time by several publications.[340][341][342] English-language scholars like Jonathan Bate and Stephanie Burt have noted that her literary and melodic sensibility and verbal writing style are rare amongst her peers.[343][344] Swift's bridges are often underscored as one of the best aspects of her songs,[345][346] earning her the title "Queen of Bridges" from Time.[347] Mojo described her as "a sharp narrator with a gift for the extended metaphor".[348]
In The New Yorker in 2011, Swift said she identifies as a songwriter first: "I write songs, and my voice is just a way to get those lyrics across".[11] Her personal experiences were a common inspiration for her early songs, which helped her navigate life.[349][350] Her "diaristic" technique began with identifying an emotion, followed by a corresponding melody.[351][352] On her first three studio albums, love, heartbreak, and insecurities, from an adolescent perspective, were dominant themes.[353][354] She delved into the tumult of toxic relationships on Red,[355] and embraced nostalgia and post-romance positivity on 1989.[281] Reputation was inspired by the downsides of Swift's fame,[356] and Lover detailed her realization of the "full spectrum of love".[357] Other themes in Swift's music include family dynamics, friendship,[358][359] alienation, self-awareness, and tackling vitriol, especially sexism.[268][360]
Her confessional lyrics received positive reviews from critics,[361][11][362] who highlighted their vivid details and emotional engagement, which they found uncommon in pop music.[363][364][365] Critics also praised her melodic compositions; Rolling Stone described Swift as "a songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for verse-chorus-bridge architecture".[366][367] NPR dubbed Swift "a master of the vernacular in her lyrics",[323] remarking that her songs offer emotional engagement because "the wit and clarity of her arrangements turn them from standard fare to heartfelt disclosures".[367] Despite the positive reception, The New Yorker stated she was generally portrayed "more as a skilled technician than as a Dylanesque visionary".[11] Tabloid media often speculated and linked the subjects of her songs with her ex-lovers, a practice reviewers and Swift herself criticized as sexist.[368][369][370] Aside from clues in album liner notes, Swift avoided talking about the subjects of her songs.[371]
On her 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore, Swift was inspired by escapism and romanticism to explore fictional narratives.[372] Without referencing her personal life, she imposed emotions onto imagined characters and story arcs, which liberated her from tabloid attention and suggested new paths for her artistry.[351] Swift explained that she welcomed the new songwriting direction after she stopped worrying about commercial success.[372] According to Spin, she explored complex emotions with "precision and devastation" on Evermore.[373] Consequence stated her 2020 albums convinced skeptics of her songwriting prowess, noting her transformation from "teenage wunderkind to a confident and careful adult".[346]
Swift divides her writing into three types: "quill lyrics", referring to songs rooted in antiquated poeticism; "fountain pen lyrics", based on modern and vivid storylines; and "glitter gel pen lyrics", which are lively and frivolous.[374] Critics note the fifth track of every Swift album as the most "emotionally vulnerable" song of the album.[375] Awarding her with the Songwriter Icon Award in 2021, the National Music Publishers' Association remarked that "no one is more influential when it comes to writing music today" than Swift.[376] The Week deemed her the foremost female songwriter of modern times,[377] and the Nashville Songwriters Association International named her Songwriter-Artist of the Decade in 2022.[247] Swift has also published two original poems: "Why She Disappeared" and "If You're Anything Like Me".[378]
Performances
Further information: List of Taylor Swift live performances
Swift performing on the Reputation Stadium Tour in Seattle in May 2018. A review by Stereogum likened her onstage persona to those of "classic rock deities".[379]
Journalists have described Swift as one of the best performers and entertainers in mainstream music. Often praised for her showmanship and stage presence,[380][381][382] Swift is known for her ability to command large audiences, such as in a stadium,[383][384][385] without having to rely fully on dance like her contemporaries do.[386] According to V magazine's Greg Krelenstein, she possesses "a rare gift of turning a stadium spectacle into an intimate setting", irrespective of whethere she is "plucking a guitar or leading an army of dancers".[387]
In a 2008 review of Swift's early performances, Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker called Swift a "preternaturally skilled" entertainer with a vibrant stage presence, adding "she returned the crowd's energy with the professionalism she has shown since the age of fourteen."[388] In 2023, Adrian Horton of The Guardian noted her "seemingly endless stamina" on the Eras Tour,[389] and i critic Ilana Kaplan called her showmanship "unparalleled".[390]
Critics have highlighted Swift's versatility as an entertainer, praising her ability to switch onstage personas and performance styles depending on the varying themes and aesthetics of her albums.[391][392] Her concert productions have been characterized by elaborate Broadway theatricality and high technology,[393] and her performances frequently incorporate a live band, with whom she has played and toured since 2007.[394] Swift also often accompanies herself with musical instruments such as electric guitar,[395] acoustic guitar, piano,[396] and sometimes a banjo or ukulele.[397][398] Interacting frequently with the audience, her solo acoustic performances are considered intimate and emotionally resonant, complementing her story-based lyrics and fan connection.[339][399] Lydia Burgham of The Spinoff opined that this intimacy remains "integral to her singer-songwriter origins".[400][396] Chris Willman of Variety called Swift "pop's most approachable superstar",[401] and the 21st century's most popular performer.[402]
Video and film
Further information: Taylor Swift videography
Swift emphasizes visuals as a key creative component of her music making process.[403] She has collaborated with different directors to produce her music videos, and over time she has become more involved with writing and directing. She developed the concept and treatment for "Mean" in 2011[404] and co-directed the music video for "Mine" with Roman White the year before.[405] In an interview, White said that Swift "was keenly involved in writing the treatment, casting and wardrobe. And she stayed for both the 15-hour shooting days, even when she wasn't in the scenes."[406]
From 2014 to 2018, Swift collaborated with director Joseph Kahn on eight music videos—four each from her albums 1989 and Reputation. Kahn has praised Swift's involvement in the craft.[407] She worked with American Express for the "Blank Space" music video (which Kahn directed), and served as an executive producer for the interactive app AMEX Unstaged: Taylor Swift Experience, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive Program in 2015.[408] Swift produced the music video for "Bad Blood" and won a Grammy Award for Best Music Video in 2016.[409]
Her production company, Taylor Swift Productions, is credited with producing all of her visual media starting with the 2018 concert documentary Reputation Stadium Tour.[410] She continued to co-direct music videos for the Lover singles "Me!" with Dave Meyers, and "You Need to Calm Down" (also serving as a co-executive producer) and "Lover" with Drew Kirsch,[411] but first ventured into sole direction with the video for "The Man" (which won her the MTV Video Music Award for Best Direction).[412] After Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Swift debuted as a filmmaker with All Too Well: The Short Film,[247] which made her the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Best Music Video as a sole director.[413] Swift has cited Chloé Zhao, Greta Gerwig, Nora Ephron, Guillermo del Toro, John Cassavetes, and Noah Baumbach as her filmmaking influences.[403]
Achievements
Further information: List of awards and nominations received by Taylor Swift
In 2009, Swift became the first country singer in history to win an MTV Video Music Award.
Swift has won 12 Grammy Awards (including three for Album of the Year—tying for the most by an artist),[414] an Emmy Award,[415] 40 American Music Awards (the most won by an artist),[416] 29 Billboard Music Awards (the most won by a woman),[417] 101 Guinness World Records,[418] 23 MTV Video Music Awards (including four Video of the Year wins—the most by an act),[249] 12 Country Music Association Awards (including the Pinnacle Award),[419] eight Academy of Country Music Awards,[420] and two Brit Awards.[168] As a songwriter, she has been honored by the Nashville Songwriters Association,[62][421] the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the National Music Publishers' Association and was the youngest person on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time in 2015.[422][423] At the 64th BMI Awards in 2016, Swift was the first woman to be honored with an award named after its recipient.[424]
From available data, Swift has amassed over 50 million album sales and 150 million single sales as of 2019,[425][426][427] and 114 million units globally, including 78 billion streams as of 2021.[428][429] The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) ranked her as the Global Recording Artist of the Year for a record three times (2014, 2019 and 2022).[430] Swift has the most number-one albums in the United Kingdom and Ireland for a female artist this millennium,[431][432] earned the highest income for an artist on Chinese digital music platforms (RMB 159,000,000 as of 2021),[433] and is the first artist to replace themselves at the top spot and occupy the entire top five of the Australian albums chart.[434][435] Swift remains the world's highest-grossing female touring act of all time, with cumulative ticket sales at $1.68 billion as of September 2023 according to Pollstar.[436] The Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour ever by a woman (as of August 2023).[437] Beginning with Fearless, each of her studio albums have opened with over one million global units.[438][439] Swift is the most streamed female act on Spotify and Apple Music;[440][441] On Spotify, she is the only artist to have received more than 200 and 250 million streams in one day (260 million on October 27, 2023),[442] and the only female act to reach 100 million monthly listeners.[443] The most entries and the most simultaneous entries for an artist on the Billboard Global 200, with 123 and 31 songs, respectively, are among her feats.[444][445]
In the US, Swift has sold over 37.3 million albums as of 2019,[427] when Billboard placed her eighth on its Greatest of All Time Artists Chart.[446] Eleven of her songs have topped the Billboard Hot 100.[255] She is the longest-reigning act of the Billboard Artist 100 (83 weeks);[447] the soloist with the most cumulative weeks (64) atop the Billboard 200;[448] the woman with the most Billboard 200 number-ones (13),[254] Hot 100 entries (212),[449] top-ten songs (42),[450] and weeks atop the Top Country Albums (99);[451] and the act with the most Digital Songs number-ones (27).[452] Swift is the first woman to simultaneously chart four albums in the top 10 and 11 albums on the entire Billboard 200.[453][454] She is the second highest-certified female digital singles artist (and fifth overall) in the U.S., with 137.5 million total units certified by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA),[455] and the first woman to have both an album (Fearless) and a song ("Shake It Off") certified Diamond.[456]
Swift has appeared in various power listings. Time included her on its annual list of the 100 most influential people in 2010, 2015, and 2019.[457] She was one of the "Silence Breakers" honored as Time Person of the Year in 2017 for speaking up about sexual assault.[458] In 2014, she was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the music category[459] and again in 2017 in its "All-Star Alumni" category.[460] Swift became the youngest woman to be included on Forbes' list of the 100 most powerful women in 2015, ranked at number 64.[461] Swift received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from New York University and served as its commencement speaker on May 18, 2022.[247]
Cultural status
Main article: Cultural impact of Taylor Swift
Swift at the 2010 Time 100 Gala
Swift has made a profound impact on the music industry, popular culture, economy and beyond.[462][463] She dominates cultural conversations,[464][465] and hence publications describe her as a cultural "vitality" or zeitgeist.[466][467][468] Billboard noted only few artists have had her chart success, critical acclaim, and fan support, resulting in a wide impact.[469] Swift's million-selling albums are considered an anomaly in the streaming-dominated industry following the end of the album era in the 2010s.[470][471] She is the only artist in Luminate Data history to have five albums sell over a million copies in a week,[472] leading New York magazine to call her "the one bending the music industry to her will".[471] Economist Alan Krueger described Swift as an "economic genius".[473]
In 2013, New York magazine's Jody Rosen dubbed Swift the "world's biggest pop star", and opined that the trajectory of her stardom has defied established patterns. Rosen added that Swift "falls between genres, eras, demographics, paradigms, trends", leaving all the other artists "vying for second place".[299] According to CNN, Swift began the 2010s decade as a country star and ended it as an "all-time musical titan".[474] She was the most googled woman in 2019 and musician in 2022.[475][476] Her fanbase is known as the Swifties.[251]
Legacy
"You have different artists dominating different sectors of the industry: Some are huge at streaming, some are big draws on the road. But we're at this moment where there's no one better than Taylor Swift, whether that's on the radio, with streaming, ticket sales or just cultural impact."
– Jason Lipshutz, Billboard executive director, 2023[477]
Swift helped shape the modern country music scene,[478] having extended her success and fame beyond the Anglosphere,[299][478] pioneered the use of internet (Myspace) as a marketing tool,[33][52] and introduced the genre to a younger generation.[479][299] Country labels have since become interested in signing young singers who write their own music;[480] her guitar performances contributed to the "Taylor Swift factor", a phenomenon to which an upsurge in guitar sales to women, a previously ignored demographic, is attributed.[481][482]
According to publications, Swift changed the music landscape "forever" with her genre transitions, a discography that accommodates cultural shifts,[483] and her ability to popularize any sound in mainstream music.[484] Lyrically, in being personal and vulnerable in her songs, music journalist Nick Catucci opined Swift helped make space for later singers like Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, and Halsey to do the same.[485] Scholars have highlighted the literary sensibility and poptimist implications of Swift in the 21st century.[486][487] She has been credited with legitimizing and popularizing the concept of album "eras".[488][489]
Swift has influenced numerous music artists, and her albums have inspired an entire generation of singer-songwriters.[479][309][490] Journalists praise her ability to reform industry practices, noting how her actions changed streaming policies, prompted awareness of intellectual property in new musicians,[491][492] and reshaped ticketing models.[493] Various sources deem Swift's music a paradigm representing the millennial generation;[494] Vox called her the "millennial Bruce Springsteen",[495] and The Times named her "the Bob Dylan of our age".[496] Swift earned the title Woman of the Decade (2010s) from Billboard,[497] Artist of the Decade (2010s) at the American Music Awards,[498] and Global Icon at the Brit Awards for her impact.[429] Senior artists such as Paul McCartney,[499] Mick Jagger,[500] Madonna,[501] and Parton have praised her musicianship.[502] Carole King regards Swift her "professional grand daughter" and thanked Swift for "carrying the torch forward".[503] Springsteen called her a "tremendous" writer,[504] while Ringo Starr and Billy Joel considered Swift the Beatles' successor.[505][506]
Swift is a subject of academic study and scholarly media research.[286] Various educational institutions offer courses on Swift in literary, cultural and sociopolitical contexts.[507][286] Entomologists named a millipede species Nannaria swiftae in her honor.[508]
Public image
Swift's music, life and image are points of attention in global celebrity culture.[286] Initially a teen idol,[509] she has become a dominant figure in popular culture,[510] often referred to as a pop icon.[301][511] Publications note her immense popularity and longevity as the kind of fame unwitnessed since the 20th century.[512][513] Music critics Sam Sanders and Ann Powers regard Swift as a "surprisingly successful composite of megawatt pop star and bedroom singer-songwriter."[514]
Journalists have written about Swift's polite and "open" personality,[36][45] calling her a "media darling" and "a reporter's dream".[361] Awarding her for her humanitarian endeavors in 2012, former First Lady Michelle Obama described Swift as an artist who "has rocketed to the top of the music industry but still keeps her feet on the ground, someone who has shattered every expectation of what a 22-year-old can accomplish".[515] Swift, labeled by the media in her early career as "America's Sweetheart" for her likability and girl-next-door image,[516][517] has earned a reputation for her enthusiasm at award shows.[518][519] YouGov surveys ranked her as the world's most admired female musician from 2019 to 2021.[520]
Though Swift is reluctant to publicly discuss her personal life, believing it to be "a career weakness",[521] it is a topic of widespread media attention and tabloid speculation,[522] with all her moves "closely monitored and analyzed."[467] Clash described Swift as a lightning rod for criticism.[523] The New York Times asserted in 2013 that her "dating history has begun to stir what feels like the beginning of a backlash" and questioned whether she was in the midst of a "quarter-life crisis".[524] Swift's detractors accused her of being "calculated" and manipulating her image—a narrative bolstered after the 2016 dispute with West.[173][174] Cultural critics have highlighted that Swift's life and career have been subject to intense misogyny and slut-shaming,[525][526] and she is an easy target of "fragile male egos",[527] hence her antennae for sexism are crucial for the industry.[528] Swift has also been a victim of numerous house break-ins and stalkers, some of whom were armed.[529][530]
Having embraced the cat lady archetype,[531] Swift owns three cats: Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson, and Benjamin Button. They have been featured or referenced in her videos and other works.[532]
Entrepreneurship
Media outlets describe Swift as a savvy businesswoman.[533][534] She is also known for her traditional album rollouts, consisting of a variety of promotional activities that Rolling Stone termed as an inescapable "multimedia bonanza".[535][536] Easter eggs and cryptic teasers became a common practice in contemporary pop music because of Swift.[537] Publications describe her discography as a music "universe" subject to analyses by fans, critics and journalists.[538][539][510] Swift maintains an active presence on social media and a close relationship with fans, to which many journalists attribute her success.[540][463][541] She has an in-house management team called 13 Management.[542]
Swift has endorsed businesses. In 2009, she launched a l.e.i. sundress range at Walmart,[543] and designed American Greetings cards and Jakks Pacific dolls.[544][545] Also that year, she became a spokesperson for the National Hockey League's Nashville Predators and Sony Cyber-shot digital cameras.[546][547] Swift launched two Elizabeth Arden fragrances—"Wonderstruck" and "Wonderstruck Enchanted",[548] followed by "Taylor" and its "Made of Starlight" variation in 2013,[549][550] and "Incredible Things" in 2014.[551] She was appointed global tourism ambassador for New York City in 2014,[552] and signed multi-year deals with AT&T in 2016 and bank corporation Capital One in 2019.[553][554] Swift released a sustainable clothing line with Stella McCartney in 2019.[555] In light of her philanthropic support for independent record stores during the COVID-19 pandemic, Record Store Day named Swift their first-ever global ambassador in 2022.[556]
Social activism
Swift identifies as a pro-choice feminist,[557] and is one of the founding signatories of the Time's Up movement against sexual harassment.[558] She criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade (1973) and end federal abortion rights in 2022.[559] Swift advocates for LGBT rights,[560] and has called for the passing of the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.[561][562] The New York Times wrote her 2011 music video for "Mean" had a positive impact on the LGBTQ+ community.[563] Swift performed during WorldPride NYC 2019 at the Stonewall Inn, a gay rights monument.[564] She has donated to the LGBT organizations Tennessee Equality Project and GLAAD.[565][566]
A supporter of the March for Our Lives movement and gun control reform in the U.S.,[567] Swift is a vocal critic of white supremacy, racism, and police brutality.[568][557] Following the George Floyd protests, she donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Black Lives Matter movement,[569] called for the removal of Confederate monuments in Tennessee,[570] and advocated for Juneteenth to become a national holiday.[571]
In 2020, she urged her fans to check their voter registration ahead of elections, which resulted in 65,000 people registering to vote within one day of her post,[572] and endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election.[573] In spite of warnings that she might lose fans, she is an outspoken critic of former president Donald Trump and has expressed regret that she has not spoken up more often. She says that she wants to be "on the right side of history".[574]
Wealth
Swift's net worth is estimated by Forbes and Bloomberg News at $1.1 billion as of October 2023, making her the first musician to achieve billionaire status "solely based on her songs and performances".[575][576] Additionally, her publication rights over her first six albums were valued at $200 million in 2022.[577] Forbes named her the annual top-earning female musician four times (2016, 2019, 2021, and 2022).[578] She was the highest-paid celebrity of 2016 with $170 million—a feat recognized by the Guinness World Records as the highest annual earnings ever for a female musician,[579] which she herself surpassed with $185 million in 2019.[580] Overall, Forbes listed Swift as the highest-paid female artist of the 2010s, earning $825 million.[581] She has also developed a real estate portfolio worth $150 million as of 2023, with properties in Nashville, New York City, Los Angeles (Samuel Goldwyn Estate), and Rhode Island (High Watch).[582]
Philanthropy
Swift is known for her philanthropic efforts.[583] She ranked number one on DoSomething's 2015 "Gone Good" list,[584] having received the Star of Compassion from the Tennessee Disaster Services and the Big Help Award from the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards for her "dedication to helping others" and "inspiring others through action".[585][586] In 2008, she donated $100,000 to the Red Cross to help the victims of the Iowa flood.[587] In 2009, she sang at BBC's Children in Need concert and raised £13,000 for the cause.[588] Swift has performed at charity relief events, including Sydney's Sound Relief concert.[589] In response to the May 2010 Tennessee floods, Swift donated $500,000 during a telethon hosted by WSMV.[590] In 2011, Swift used a dress rehearsal of her Speak Now tour as a benefit concert for victims of recent tornadoes in the U.S., raising more than $750,000.[591] In 2016, she donated $1 million to Louisiana flood relief efforts and $100,000 to the Dolly Parton Fire Fund.[592][593] Swift donated to food banks after Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in 2017 and at every stop of the Eras Tour in 2023;[594][595] she also directly employed local businesses throughout the tour and gave $55 million in bonus payments to her entire crew.[596][597] In 2020, Swift donated $1 million for Tennessee tornado relief.[598]
She is a supporter of the arts. A benefactor of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame,[599] Swift has donated $75,000 to Nashville's Hendersonville High School to help refurbish the school auditorium,[600] $4 million to fund the building of a new education center at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville,[601] $60,000 to the music departments of six U.S. colleges,[602] and $100,000 to the Nashville Symphony.[603] Also a promoter of children's literacy, she has donated money and books to various schools around the country to improve education.[604][605] In 2007, Swift partnered with the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police to launch a campaign to protect children from online predators.[606] She has donated items to several charities for auction, including the UNICEF Tap Project and MusiCares.[607] As recipient of the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year in 2011, Swift donated $25,000 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Tennessee.[608] In 2012, Swift participated in the Stand Up to Cancer telethon, performing the charity single "Ronan", which she wrote in memory of a four-year-old boy who died of neuroblastoma.[609] She has also donated $100,000 to the V Foundation for Cancer Research[610] and $50,000 to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.[611] Swift has encouraged young people to volunteer in their local communities as part of Global Youth Service Day.[612]
Swift donated to fellow singer-songwriter Kesha to help with her legal battles against Dr. Luke and to actress Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation organization.[583][613] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Swift donated to the World Health Organization and Feeding America,[614] supported independent record stores,[615][616] and offered a signed guitar for auction to raise money for the National Health Service.[617][better source needed] Swift performed "Soon You'll Get Better" on the One World: Together At Home television special, a benefit concert curated by Lady Gaga for Global Citizen to raise funds for the World Health Organization's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.[618] In 2018 and 2021, Swift donated to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.[583][619] In addition to charitable causes, she has made donations to her fans several times for their medical or academic expenses.[620]
Discography
Main articles: Taylor Swift albums discography, Taylor Swift singles discography, and List of songs by Taylor Swift
Studio albums
Taylor Swift (2006)
Fearless (2008)
Speak Now (2010)
Red (2012)
1989 (2014)
Reputation (2017)
Lover (2019)
Folklore (2020)
Evermore (2020)
Midnights (2022)
Re-recorded albums
Fearless (Taylor's Version) (2021)
Red (Taylor's Version) (2021)
Speak Now (Taylor's Version) (2023)
1989 (Taylor's Version) (2023)
Filmography
Main article: Taylor Swift videography
Nota bene: This section lists select works only. Refer to the main article for further information.
Valentine's Day (2010)
The Lorax (2012)
The Giver (2014)
Cats (2019)
All Too Well: The Short Film (2021)
Amsterdam (2022)
Documentary and concert films
Journey to Fearless (2010)
The 1989 World Tour Live (2015)
Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour (2018)
Miss Americana (2020)
Taylor Swift: City of Lover (2020)
Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions (2020)
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (2023)
Tours
Main article: List of Taylor Swift live performances
Fearless Tour (2009–2010)
Speak Now World Tour (2011–2012)
The Red Tour (2013–2014)
The 1989 World Tour (2015)
Reputation Stadium Tour (2018)
The Eras Tour (2023–2024)
See also
List of American Grammy Award winners and nominees
List of highest-certified music artists in the United States
List of most-followed Instagram accounts
List of most-followed Twitter accounts
List of most-subscribed YouTube channels
Footnotes
Swift held the record until the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020.[90][91]
Though Swift has properties throughout the U.S., she identifies Nashville as her home.[149][150]
Swift initially wrote the song for her 2012 album Red, but left it off the album's final cut.[179]
Swift and Pat Monahan of Train originally wrote the song for Swift's 2012 album Red.[196]
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58 Most Beautiful Women In The World (Updated 2023)
Take some inspiration from these divas that have seized the globe with their talent and beauty.
Written by Esha Saxena
Edited by Subhrojyoti Mukherjee
Fact-checked by Joyce Joyson • Jul 13, 2023
58 Most Beautiful Women In The World (Updated 2023)
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Image: Getty
The definition of beauty keeps evolving with time, but as writer H.G. Wells puts it, ‘Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.’ In this article, we have compiled a list of the top 58 most beautiful women in the world to let you experience the magic they created either through their work or auras.
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However, one must not forget that beauty is not just skin deep. Your soul is your true beauty, reflected in your graceful and radiant character. So ladies, considering beauty as shallow as your physical appearance can be a grave mistake. There is an exquisite charm in each of God’s creations that just needs the right pair of eyes to be seen.
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So, let us get inspired to see the beauty within through the example of these most beautiful women in the world. Scroll on.
In This Article
List Of 58 Most Beautiful Women In The World
Infographic: 10 Beautiful & Inspiring Women In The World
Frequently Asked Questions
List Of 58 Most Beautiful Women In The World
1. Jodie Comer
Jodi Comer
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Image: Shutterstock
Date of Birth: 11 March, 1993
Place of Birth: Liverpool, England
Height: 72 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has won several awards including two BAFTA awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
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Jodie Comer is a well-known British actress who has consistently topped the world’s most beautiful women list with a remarkable facial accuracy of 94.52%. Jodie’s exceptional talent can be witnessed in various films and TV series such as Killing Eve, Free Guy, Help, and The White Princess. In 2018, British Vogue recognized her as one of “The Most Influential Girls of 2018”. And the following year, she was featured in Forbes’ prestigious “30 Under 30” list.
2. Zendaya Coleman
Zendaya Coleman
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Image: Shutterstock
Date of Birth: 1 September, 1996
Place of Birth: California, U.S.
Height: 75 m
Profession: Actress, Singer
Awards and Achievements: She has won two Primetime Emmy Awards for her drama series Euphoriaand a Golden Globe Award.
Zendaya Coleman is famous for her roles in the Spiderman series, Malcolm & Marie, Dune, and The Greatest Showman. She made it to the Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in 2016, and the Times magazine’s annual list of 100 most influential people in the world, in 2022. In recognition of her talent, Zendaya was honored with the Primetime Emmy Award in 2020 and 2022. She is the youngest to win the Emmy Awards for acting.
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3. Ariana Grande
Ariana Grande
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Date of Birth: 26 June, 1993
Place of Birth: Boca Raton, Florida, U.S.
Height: 57 m
Profession: Singer, Songwriter, and Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has won several awards including the Billboard Music Awards and the Grammy Awards.
Ariana Grande is known for her incredible voice and captivating performances. With a four-octave vocal range, she has made a name for herself in the music industry with her popular Pop and R&B songs. Her hit song “Thank U, Next” gained immense popularity in 2019, further solidifying her status as a successful artist. In addition to her musical accomplishments, Ariana Grande is also a vocal advocate for abortion rights, as evidenced by her participation in the ‘Bans Off Our Bodies’ advertisement in The New York Times in May 2022.
4. Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift
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Date of Birth: 13 December, 1989
Place of Birth: West Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Height: 8 m
Profession: Singer-Songwriter
Awards and Achievements: She has won several awards including 12 Grammy Awards, 40 AMAs, 29 Billboard Music Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award
Taylor Swift is widely recognized for her captivating and soulful songs. What sets her apart is her ability to convey stories through her music in a way that truly resonates with audiences. With her stunning blue eyes and graceful features, she has been hailed as one of the most beautiful women in the world, scoring an impressive Golden Ratio rating of 91.64%.
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5. Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian
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Image: Shutterstock
Date of Birth: 21 October, 1980
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Height: 57 m
Profession: Media personality, Businesswoman
Awards and Achievements: She has won five Teen Choice Awards for her reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians and a People’s Choice Award
Who doesn’t know the Kardashians, especially Kim K? She is an American media personality, socialite, and entrepreneur who is considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. Her facial features have 91.39% accuracy to the golden ratio of beauty, also called phi. She shot to fame in 2007 through her popular television reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians. By 2010, Kim K signed several brand endorsements and her wax figure was revealed in Madame Tussauds. She also landed a place in the Times magazine’s 100 most influential people list in 2015. In 2017, Kardashian launched her beauty and fragrance
6. Jung Ho-yeon
Jung Ho yeon
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Date of Birth: 23 June, 1994
Place of Birth: Seoul, South Korea
Height: 77 m
Profession: Actress and Model
Awards and Achievements: Screen Actors Guild Awards
South Korean model and actress Jung Ho-yeon gained attention during the New York Fashion Week in 2016, where she made her international runway debut. Jung Ho-yeon has a golden ratio score of 91.22% and her high score was mainly due to her eye position, which gave her face exceptional dimensions. She gained worldwide recognition for her supporting role in the popular South Korean series ‘Squid Game’ as Kang Sae-byeok, which also landed her a Primetime Emmy Awards nomination.
7. Zozibini Tunzi
Zozibini Tunzi
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Date of Birth: 18 September, 1993
Place of Birth: Tsolo, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Height: 1.77 m
Profession: Model
Awards and Achievements: Miss South Africa 2019, Miss Universe 2019
Zozibini Tunzi is the cynosure of all eyes as the winner of the Miss Universe 2019 pageant. She is also the first black woman with afro-textured hair to win the title. Her zeal to fight gender stereotypes and raise awareness against gender-based violence is impressive and inspiring.
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When asked what is the most important thing we should teach young girls today, she won hearts across the globe with her fascinating answer: “I think the most important thing we should be teaching young girls today is leadership… Nothing is as important as taking up space in society and cementing yourself.”
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8. Bella Hadid
Bella-Hadid
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Date of Birth: 9 October 1996
Place of Birth: Washington DC
Height: 1.75m
Profession: Model
Awards and Achievements: Model of the year, Social Media Star of the Year
Though Bella Hadid is only in her early 20s, she has earned quite a name for herself. According to the Golden Ratio of Beauty Phi (a scientific measure of physical perfection), she is the most beautiful girl in the world. This young model has both beauty and brains, and she sure knows how to walk the ramp and grab all eyes with her elegant charm. Her chiseled chin and long legs give some of the best models in the industry a run for their money. Though Bella has achieved immense fame and success, her friends and family claim that she is extremely humble and adores the simple things in life.
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Bella came in ninth place on Forbes’ 2017 list of highest-paid models, making her the youngest person on that list.
9. Deepika Padukone
Deepika Padukone
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Date of Birth: January 5, 1986
Place of Birth: Copenhagen, Denmark
Height: 1.74 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has received several awards including three Filmfare Awards
Deepika Padukone has evolved and she’s HUGE! She is one of the highest-paid actresses in the world. She has done some wonderful work in movies like Bajirao Mastani, Piku and others. Her first Hollywood project was in the action film xXx: Return of Xander Cage in 2017. She also has her own clothing line and has started a foundation called Live Laugh Love to create awareness about mental health in India. Don’t y’all want to find out all about her daily nutrition and exercise routine right now?
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10. Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson
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Date of Birth: November 22, 1984
Place of Birth: Manhattan, New York, U.S
Height: 1.6 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and achievements: She won the BAFTA and was also nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Lost in Translation
Scarlett Johansson is the prettiest girl in the world. She is an American actress, model, and singer. She began her acting career during her childhood. The film ‘Lost in Translation’ alongside Bill Murray was her break-out role. ScarJo convincingly played a 25-year-old woman at the age of 18. Some of her other popular films include – Vicki Cristina Barcelona, Lucy, Don Jon, and others.
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11. Blake Lively
Blake Lively
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Date of Birth: August 25, 1987
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, U.S
Height: 1.78 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She won the Teen Choice Award for Best Breakthrough Performance among others
Lively is best known for her role as Serena Van Der Woodsen in the hit TV series Gossip Girl. She has also worked in movies like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Green Lantern, The Age of Adeline and The Shallows. She is married to the actor Ryan Reynolds.
Related: The Ultimate Blake Lively Makeup Guide
12. Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie
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Date of Birth: June 4, 1975
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, United States
Height: 1.69 m
Profession: Actress, filmmaker, humanitarian, UN Ambassador
Awards and Achievements: She has received an Oscar, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and three Golden Globe Awards
Angelina Jolie, the most ravishing and hottest woman of all time, is cited as Hollywood’s highest-paid and most beautiful actress in the world. She became popular after playing the lead role in the Lara Croft blockbuster movies. She also actively works on child rights, human and women’s rights issues. She founded the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which contributes to humanitarian causes all around the world.
13. Halle Berry
Lisa Haydon
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Date of Birth: August 14, 1966
Place of Birth: Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Height: 1.65 m
Profession: Actress
The multi-talented and most attractive woman Halle Berry began her career as a winsome model and went on to become one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses. As of 2019, Halle remains the only African-American actress to have been awarded an Oscar for a leading role, which she won for her role in the 2002 film Monster’s Ball.
14. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
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Date of Birth: November 1, 1973
Place of Birth: Mangalore, India
Height: 1.7 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has been awarded the Padma Shri by the Government Of India and she has also won numerous other awards and accolades
Aishwarya Rai is on almost every “world’s most beautiful women” list that exists on the planet. She was crowned Miss World in 1994. She has pulled off some of the most glamorous looks with her enchanting eyes and charming performances. She made her acting debut in Mani Ratnam’s 1997 Tamil film – Iruvar and Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya, her Hindi film also released in the same year. She has acted in over forty films in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali.
15. Beyonce Knowles
Beyonce Knowles
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Date of Birth: September 4, 1981
Place of Birth: Houstan, Texas, U.S
Height: 1.69 m
Profession: Singer-songwriter, Actress
Awards and Achievements: With a total of 22 awards and 62 nominations from the Grammys for her music (as a solo artist and with Destiny’s Child), she is the most nominated woman and the second most-awarded woman in Grammy history
Beyonce also referred to as ‘Queen B’ by her fans, is one of the biggest and most successful musicians in the world. Her thrilling vocals stunning stage presence, and her dancing skills are something nobody has matched up to. She in herself is a global brand. She’s married to the successful hip-hop artist Jay-Z.
16. Priyanka Chopra
Priyanka Chopra
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Date of Birth: July 18, 1982
Place of birth: Jamshedpur, India
Height: 1.69 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has received several awards including the National Film Award and five Filmfare Awards
Priyanka Chopra won the title of Miss World in 2000. She is one of the most famous Indian actresses. Initially, she wanted to study aeronautical engineering but she moved to the film industry after some great opportunities came knocking at her door. Some of her noteworthy works . In 2015, she began starring in the ABC TV series Quantico. She is one of the highest-paid actresses in India and is also known for her philanthropic work. Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
17. Gal Gadot
Gal Gadot
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Date of Birth: April 30, 1985
Place of Birth: Israel
Height: 1.78 m
Profession: Actress
She is primarily known for her role as Wonder Woman in the new Wonder Woman movie. She was five months pregnant during reshoots and yet she slayed the part to make the film a HUGE hit across the world. She says she wants both boys and girls to look upto Wonder Woman.
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She won the Miss Israel beauty pageant in 2004 at the age of 18.
18. Emma Watson
Emma Watson
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Date of Birth: April 15, 1990
Place of Birth: Paris, France
Height: 1.65 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has won over a dozen awards for her performance in The Harry Potter movies and her other works
The sexy beautiful women Emma Watson, the star of the Harry Potter franchise, blossomed into a much-talented and respectable actress. She is one of the most influential celebrities in the world. She went to Brown University. She has also acted in movies like Perks of Being a Wallflower, Noah and The Beauty and the Beast.
19. Kat Dennings
Kat Dennings
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Date of Birth: June 13, 1986
Place of Birth: Pennsylvania, United States
Height: 1.61 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has been nominated for various awards like The MTV Movie Awards for Best Breakthrough Performance and she won the Crystal Reel Award for Best Actress for her role in To Write Love on Her Arms
Kat Dennings made her acting debut on HBO’s Sex and the City after which she worked in several movies like the 40-year Old Virgin, Big Momma’s House 2, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Thor among her other works. She also plays the lead role of Max in the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls.
20. Sofia Vergara
Sofia Vergara
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Date of Birth: July 10, 1972
Place of Birth: Colombia
Height: 1.7 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has been nominated for 4 Golden Globe Awards for her performance in the hit comedy show Modern Family besides winning other awards
Apart from her cool Colombian accent, her alluring beauty is what best stands out. She stars on the ABC comedy series Modern Family as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett. She was discovered by a photographer while she was walking along a Colombian beach and was soon offered with tons of modeling offers. She is considered to be one of the most influential Latinas in Hollywood. She is one of the most beautiful women in history.
Related: Sofia Vergara’s Beauty & Fitness Secrets REVEALED!
21. Emily Ratajkowski
Dakota Johnson
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Date of Birth: June 7, 1991
Place of Birth: Westminster, London, England
Height: 1.70 m
Profession: Actress and Model
Emily Ratajkowski began her career at the age of 14 when she did teen print catalog modeling
Related: This Is What Emily Ratajkowski Does To Get That Toned Body
22. Jourdan Dunn
Jourdan Dunn
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Date of Birth: August 3, 1990
Place of Birth: Greenford, United Kingdom
Height: 1.8 m
Profession: Model
Awards and Achievements: Glamour Award for Inspiration, Glamour Award for Entrepreneur
Jourdan Dunn was discovered by the legendary agency Storm Model, who also discovered Kate Moss in the past. Ever since, Dunn has taken the fashion world by a storm and has been captivating and unstoppable. She has walked the ramp for nearly every top designer in the world. She is considered to be one of this generation’s supermodels.
23. Emilia Clarke
Emilia Clarke
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Date of Birth: October 23, 1986
Place of Birth: London, United Kingdom
Height: 1.57 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She won the Scream Award for Female Breakthrough Performance, SFX Award for Best Actress among her other achievements.
This beautiful woman rose to prominence through her role on the hit HBO Fantasy series Game of Thrones, for her striking portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen aka “Khaleesi,” which gained immense popularity all over the world. In November 2016 she was cast as the female lead in the upcoming Star Wars Han Solo Anthology Film.
24. Mahira Khan
Mahira Khan
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Date of Birth: December 21, 1984
Place of Birth: Karachi, Pakistan
Height: 1.7 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She won several Awards for her performances in various TV shows of Pakistan
Mahira Khan is one of Pakistan’s most popular and highest-paid actresses. She made her debut alongside Atif Aslam in a hit romance Bol. She started her career as a VJ in 2006 and rose to prominence with her role in the hit TV show Humsafar. She also played the lead role in her first Bollywood film ‘Raees’ alongside Shah Rukh Khan.
25. Rachel McAdams
Rachel McAdams
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Date of Birth: November 17, 1978
Place of Birth: London, Canada
Height: 1.63 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She won the Screen Actors Guild Award, Teen Choice Award, MTV Movie Awards for Best Breakthrough performance among others
One of the prettiest women in the world, Rachel McAdams portrayed the character of Allie in The Notebook and stole our hearts with her appealing personality. She went to college and studied Theatre and initially worked in Canadian television and film productions. Some of her famous movies include Mean Girls, Spotlight, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Wedding Crashers and The Family Stone among various others.
26. Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway
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Date of Birth: November 12, 1982
Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York, United States
Height: 1.73 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her performance in Les Miserables, BAFTA Award, Teen Choice Awards among others
Anne Hathaway’s first major breakthrough role was of Mia Thermapolis in The Princess Diaries. She has also received praise and recognition for her performance in movies like The Devil Wears Prada, Love and Other Drugs, Rachel Getting Married and many others. She also played Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.
27. Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey
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Date of Birth: June 21, 1985
Place of Birth: New York, United States
Height: 1.7 m
Profession: Singer-songwriter
Awards and Achievements: She has won several awards for her music including the Brit Award in 2012 for International Breakthrough Act. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Original Song
Elizabeth Woolridge Grant goes by the shiny stage name ‘Lana Del Rey’. She will remind you of another decade that passed by, perhaps the ‘80s. She has made the world a better place with her retro vibe, unique voice and music that stands out so beautifully. Two of her biggest musical influences are poles apart – Kurt Cobain and Britney Spears. She is one of the most beautiful girls in the world.
28. Rihanna
Rihanna
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Date of Birth: February 20, 1988
Place of Birth: Saint Michael Parish, Barbados
Height: 1.73 m
Profession: Singer
Awards and Achievements: She won several Grammy’s, MTV Video Music Awards and others
Riri is undoubtedly one of the most famous celebrities in the world. She first entered the music industry by recording demo tapes. At 16, she auditioned for Jay-Z, the president of Def Jam records, and he signed her on. Today, her total net worth is over a $90 million. She is the most subscribed to artist on Vevo, has the most views with just over 4.6 billion views
29. Lupita Nyong’o
Lupita Nyong’o
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Date of Birth: March 1, 1983
Place of Birth: Mexico
Height: 1.65 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She is the first Kenyan and Mexican actress to receive an Academy Award
Lupita Nyong’o is a Kenyan-Mexican actress who made her acting debut in the short film East River. She wrote, produced and directed the documentary In My Genes. She had her first feature film role in the movie 12 Years a Slave that got her wide recognition.
30. Cobie Smulders
Cobie Smulders
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Date of Birth: April 3, 1982
Place of Birth: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Height: 1.73 m
Profession: Actress
Smulders is best known for her role as Robin Scherbatsky on the hit television show How I Met Your Mother and as Maria Hill in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Cobie is also fluent in French. She has won hearts all over with her lovely smile and how perfectly she played “Robin”.
31. Mila Kunis
Mila Kunis
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Date of Birth: August 14, 1983
Place of Birth: Chernivsti, Ukraine
Height: 1.63 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for the film ‘Black Swan’
At the age of seven, Mila Kunis and her family moved from Ukraine to Los Angeles. She was enrolled in acting classes as an after-school activity, it was then that she was discovered by an agent. At fifteen, as her first major role, she played Jackie Burkhart in the TV series – That ‘70s Show. She has also voiced Meg Griffin since 1999 in the animated series – Family Guy. She’s an adventure junkie and loves skydiving.
32. Raniah Al Abdullah
Raniah Al Abdullah
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Date of Birth: August 30, 1970
Place of Birth: Kuwait
Height: 1.79 m
Profession: Queen
Raniah Al Abdullah is the world’s most beautiful woman and also the queen consort of Jordan. Since she married the now king of Jordan, she is recognized for her advocacy work related to education, health cross-cultural dialogue, youth, and the overall empowerment of the community. This powerful woman is known for her allure and impeccable sense of style.
33. Anastasia Luppova
Anastasia Luppova - Most Beautiful Women
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Image: Instagram
Date of Birth: June 26, 1985
Place of Birth: Kazan, Russia
Profession: Billiards player
Awards and Achievements: She won the 2009 Miss Billiards competition
This gorgeous beauty is a billiards player who is a two-time European champion in Russian Pyramid. She has now mastered the game and is a successful coach.
34. Nina Dobrev
Nina Dobrev
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Date of Birth: January 9, 1989
Place of Birth: Sofia, Bulgaria
Height: 1.7 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has won consistent People’s Choice and Teen Choice Awards for her lead role in the hit show The Vampire Diaries
A lot of struggling actors wish to be discovered by somebody big and Nina actually was! An agent discovered her while she was studying at the Armstrong Acting Studio in Toronto. The Bulgarian-Canadian actress played ‘Elena Gilbert’ in the supernatural drama The Vampire Diaries and instantly went sensational all over the world. She has also worked in other feature films like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Final Girls and xXx: Return of Xander Cage.
35. Irina Shayk
Irina Shayk
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Date of Birth: January 6, 1986
Place of Birth: Yemanzhelinsk, Russia
Height: 1.78 m
Profession: Model
Irina Shayk gained immense popularity when she became the exclusive face of Intimissimi lingerie. International Spokesperson. She also made her acting debut alongside Dwayne Johnson in the 2014 film – Hercules.
36. Sobhita Dhulipala
Nargis Fakhri
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Date of Birth: May 31, 1992
Place of Birth: Tenali, India
Height: 1.75 m
Profession: Actress, model
Sobhita Dhulipala was placed second at the Femina Miss India 2013 pageant and represented India at Miss Earth 2013. She started off her career with modeling and later moved on to acting. She gained a ton of fame and recognition for her lead role in Amazon’s drama series Made In Heaven.
37. Jameela Jamil
Jameela Jamil
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Date of Birth: February 25, 1986
Place of Birth: London, England
Height: 1.79 m
Profession: Presenter, actress
Jameela Jamil began her career as an English teacher before becoming a presenter on T4. She was also the first solo female presenter on the BBC Radio 1 Chart Show. At present, Jamil plays the role of Tahani on the American television series The Good Place, which has received critical acclaim and was nominated for a Golden Globe. She is also a vocal body positivity activist.
38. Keira Knightley
Keira Knightley
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Date of Birth: March 26, 1985
Place of Birth: Teddington, United Kingdom
Height: 1.7 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has won the Empire Hero Award, The Teen Choice Award and various People’s Choice Awards
Knightley has been nominated for an Academy and a Golden Globe Award. She began acting at a young age and made her film debut in 1995. She gained international recognition through her 2002 film ‘Bend it like Beckham’. Her performance was beautiful in the period drama Pride and Prejudice. Some of her best known roles include Pirates of the Caribbean. Her other talents include ballet, drawing and playing instruments like the guitar and the flute.
39. Allison Williams
Allison Williams
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Date of Birth: April 13, 1988
Place of Birth: Connecticut, United States
Height: 1.67 m
Profession: Actress
Awards and Achievements: She has been nominated for several awards such as the MTV Movie and TV Awards
Have you watched the HBO series Girls, yet? Allison Williams plays the character of ‘Marnie Michaels’ and she does a brilliant job at it. She graduated from Yale in 2010, with an English degree. She says she wanted to be an actress even before she understood anything else about her life. She has a deep sense of intellectual curiosity and she never wants to stop learning. She is also known to be a comedian and singer, alongside her acting career.
40. Miranda Kerr
Miranda Kerr
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Date of Birth: April 20, 1983
Place of Birth: Sydney, Australia
Height: 1.75 m
Profession: Model
Miranda Kerr rose to prominence in 2007 as one of Victoria’s Secret Angels. She was the first Australian Victoria’s Secret model. She began modeling at the age of thirteen and also won the 1997 Dolly Magazine model search competition. According to Forbes, she is the second highest-paid model in the world in the year 2013. In 2010, she also wrote a book called ‘Treasure Yourself – Power Thoughts for my Generation.’
41. Alexandra Daddario
Alexandra Daddario
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Date of Birth: March 16, 1986
Place of Birth: Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Height: 1.73 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements and Awards: She has been nominated for several awards including the MTV Movie Awards and Teen Choice Awards
We can’t stop gushing over her beautiful eyes, can we? Alexandra Daddario is best known for her role in the Percy Jackson film series. She has English, Italian, Irish and Czech ancestry. She has also guest-starred in series such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, True Detective, American Horror Story: Hotel among several others. She is also known for her role in the recent Baywatch movie.
42. Cate Blanchett
Kalki Koechlin
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Date of Birth: May 14, 1969
Place of Birth: Ivanhoe, Victoria, Australia
Height: 1.74 m
Profession: Actress, theatre director
Cate Blanchett has received many accolades, including two Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and three BAFTA Awards. Time Magazine also named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and in 2018, she was ranked among the highest-paid actresses in the world.
43. Jennifer Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence
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Date of Birth: August 15, 1990
Place of Birth: Indian Hills, Kentucky, United States
Height: 1.75 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: She has won an Academy Award for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook
Jennifer Shrader Lawrence is not only an Oscar-winning actress but she’s also really funny and down-to-earth. According to Forbes, she is the youngest on the list of World’s Highest Paid Actresses. In 2013, she also appeared on Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. The Hunger Games series, Silver Linings Playbook, X-men series, Passengers are some of her most popular films. She was told that she “was too pretty” to play the lead role in Winter’s Bone, so she hopped a red-eye to New York, walked in snow for 13 blocks and finally auditioned in hair that she hadn’t washed in a week. She landed the part and also received her first Oscar nomination for it. Talk about determination!
44. Zoe Kravitz
Zoe Kravitz
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Date of Birth: December 1, 1988
Place of Birth: Venice, Los Angeles, California, U.S
Height: 1.57 m
Profession: Actress, model, singer
Achievements & Awards: She has been nominated for several awards that include Teen Choice and Black Reel Awards
Zoe Kravitz comes from a mixed heritage. She is the daughter of musician Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet. She has also worked in movies like The Divergent series, No Reservations and Mad Max. She is also the lead vocalist for the band Elevator Fight.
45. Marion Cotillard
Marion Cotillard
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Date of Birth: September 30, 1975
Place of Birth: Paris, France
Height: 1.69 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: She has won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in La Vie En Rose (2008)
The French actress made her acting debut as a child in a role for one of her father’s plays. She studied drama at the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique in Orléans. After small appearances and performances in theater, Cotillard had occasional and minor roles in TV shows, but her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s. She always believed that she would be a singer and that she became an actress by fluke.
46. Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Seyfried
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Date of Birth: December 3, 1985
Place of Birth: Pennsylvania, United States
Height: 1.59 m
Profession: Actress, Singer, Song-writer
Achievements & Awards: She has received numerous accolades from People’s magazine and won several awards for her acting in films like Les Miserables
Seyfried made her movie debut in the 2004 teen comedy Mean Girls. She started her modeling career at the young age of eleven and her acting career at fifteen. She has worked in movies such as Dear John, Les Miserables and Mamma Mia! This gorgeous lady is a hard core animal lover at heart and has a beautiful dog named Finn.
47. Adriana Lima
Adriana Lima
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Date of Birth: June 12, 1981
Place of Birth: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Height: 1.78 m
Profession: Model
Adriana Lima is a Brazilian actress and model. She is known for being one of the most popular Victoria’s Secret angels since 2000. She has walked on endless high-fashion runways and is near the top of Forbes’ list. She is one among the highest-earning beautiful women models. She has an estimated net worth of over $65 million
48. Nathalie Emmanuel
Nathalie Emmanuel
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Date of Birth: March 2, 1989
Place of Birth: Southend-on-sea, United Kingdom
Height: 1.7 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: Screen Nation award for Best Female Performance in Film
She is known for her role as Missandei in the HBO fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones’. She has also appeared in The Maze runner and Fast and Furious 7.
49. Taylor Hill
Taylor Hill
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Date of Birth: March 5, 1996
Place of Birth: Palatine, Illinois, United States
Height: 1.77 m
Profession: Model
Taylor Hill is an American supermodel and a Victoria’s Secret Angel since 2015. This 23-year-old has modeled for designers like Michael Kors and Versace. She is among the top paid models in the world with a net worth of $6 million.
50. Kristen Stewart
Kristen Stewart
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Date of Birth: April 9, 1990
Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, U.S
Height: 1.65 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: She has received several awards including a Cesar award, a Milano Film Festival award, BAFTA Rising Star Award among others
Known for her distinct blue eyes and her role as the heart-breaker in the 2009 rom-com 500 Days of Summer, Deschanel is multi-talented. She plays the role of Jessica Day on the hit comedy series ‘New Girl’ quite brilliantly. She is also the producer of the same. Although she’s an incredible actress, Zooey says that her favorite thing to do is writing music.
52. Shay Mitchell
Shay Mitchell
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Date of Birth: April 10, 1987
Place of Birth: Mississauga, Canada
Height: 1.71 m
Profession: Actress, model, entrepreneur
Shannon Ashley Mitchell is a Canadian actress, model, author, and entrepreneur. Shay is half Filipino and half Irish. She is best known for her role as Emily Fields in the popular TV series Pretty Little Liars. She got the nickname Shay as she’s a fan of Jennifer Lopez a.k.a J.Lo. She wanted to pursue acting from a very young age.
53. Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman
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Date of Birth: June 9, 1981
Place of Birth: Jerusalem, Israel
Height: 1.6 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: She won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for Outstanding Performance for her Lead Role in Black Swan (2011)
She broke the spell and became the first person born in the 80s to have won an Academy Award for Best Actress. She starred in Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace while still in high school. Portman enrolled at Harvard University to study Psychology, alongside her work as an actress. She is known for her extraordinary acting skills in films like V for Vendetta, Black Swan, and others. Her advice to young grads goes like this – “Your inexperience is an asset in that it will make you think in original, unconventional ways. Accept your lack of knowledge and use it as your asset.”
54. Nazanin Boniadi
Nazanin Boniadi
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Date of Birth: May 22, 1980
Place of Birth: Tehran, Iran
Height: 1.62 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: She was nominated for a 2008 NAACP Image Award for her role on the popular American soap opera, General Hospital.
She is an Iranian-born, British-American Actress. She was born during the height of the Iranian revolution and so her parents relocated to London, shortly after. She changed her career path from Science to pursuing acting in 2006. She has appeared in TV shows like General Hospital, How I met your Mother, Scandal and Homeland and in movies like Iron Man and The Next Three Days. She also portrayed the character of Esther in the 2016 remake of Ben-Hur.
55. Penélope Cruz
Penelope Cruz
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Date of Birth: April 28, 1974
Place of Birth: Alcobendas, Spain
Height: 1.68 m
Profession: Model, Actress
Achievements & Awards: She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Cruz studied classical ballet for nine years and was signed by an agent at just 15. Some of her works include movies like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Vanilla Sky, All the Pretty Horses, Gothika and others. She also volunteered in India and Uganda, working with Mother Teresa.
56. Emma Stone
Emma Stone
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Date of Birth: November 6, 1988
Place of Birth: Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.A
Height: 1.68 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: Won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her performance as a lead actress in La La Land (2016); She has also won a BAFTA and three Screen Actor Guild Awards
Emily Jean Stone a.k.a. Emma Stone is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. She gradually climbed the ladder of success and is known for her incredible performances in movies like La La Land, Birdman, The Amazing Spiderman, Easy A, and many others. According to her, the best piece of advice that she has ever received was to “stay irrepressibly true to yourself and be tenacious about finding ways to manifest the truest form of you.”
Now, isn’t that some truly profound advice?
57. Margot Robbie
Margot Robbie
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Date of Birth: July 2, 1990
Place of Birth: Dalby, Australia
Height: 1.68 m
Profession: Actress
Achievements & Awards: Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actress in an Action Movie 2016
The Australian Actress initially appeared in Australian indie films in the late 2000s. She got her first, big break in Hollywood in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. In 2016, she portrayed the maniacal character of Harley Quinn in the superhero film Suicide Squad and she also appeared as Jane in The Legend of Tarzan, in the same year. She dislikes that some people have labeled her as a “bombshell”. She does not want to be reduced to the cliche that comes with it.
58. Jessica Jung
Jessica Jung
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Date of Birth: April 18, 1989
Place of Birth: San Francisco, California
Height: 1.63 m
Profession: Singer, Actress, Fashion Designer, Businesswoman
Achievements and Awards: She has received several Asian awards and accolades such as the Yahoo Asia Buzz Award for Asian Popularity and several others.
The multi-talented Jessica Jung currently based in South Korea was born and raised in California. When she was discovered by a South Korean Entertainment Agency, at the age of eleven, she subsequently moved to South Korea. She debuted in 2007 as a member of a South Korean Girl Group called ‘Girl Generation’, and they went on to become one of the best-selling artists of the country. She also portrayed Elle Woods in the Korean-language version of Legally Blonde.
Infographic: 10 Beautiful & Inspiring Women In The World
They say beauty is only skin deep. However, you would be surprised to know that all these women have supported a good cause at some point in their lives. If one uses their fame from beauty for a good cause, is their beauty really only skin deep? Check out the infographic below for a round-up of inspiring women who supported multiple good causes.
10 beautiful & inspiring women in the world (infographic)
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Illustration: StyleCraze Design Team
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Download Infographic in PDF version Download Infographic
Download Infographic in PDF version
Beauty lies in character rather than looks and skin color. This list of the world’s beautiful women comprises fashion models, actresses, filmmakers, singers, fashion designers, and sports players. All these amazing women have strong determination and passion for their work and have given their all to excel in their fields. Each of them is special in their own way and has left a mark on the global stage through their intelligence and beauty. We hope you find some inspiration from these beautiful women.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which country has the most beautiful women in the world?
According to many unofficial popularity votes, many people opine that Brazil and Turkey are the countries with the most beautiful women.
Who is the most beautiful woman in the world in 2022?
According to the latest Golden Ratio Of Beauty Phi (roughly 1.62, which means an ideal face shape that makes a person beautiful), Bella Hadid is considered the world’s most beautiful girl.
Who is the most beautiful woman in the world in 2023?
Jodie Comer is considered the prettiest person in the world as per the Golden Ratio Of Beauty Phi.
Who is the prettiest girl in the world?
Scarlett Johnson is considered the prettiest girl in the world.
25 Greatest Artists
The Beatles, Eminem and more of the best of the best
BY ROLLING STONE
Best Artists of all time 100 Rolling Stone
Rolling Stones in London circa 1960s. REX
IN 2004 — 50 years after Elvis Presley walked into Sun Studios and cut “That’s All Right” — Rolling Stone celebrated rock & roll’s first half-century in grand style, assembling a panel of 55 top musicians, writers and industry executives (everyone from Keith Richards to ?uestlove of the Roots) and asking them to pick the most influential artists of the rock & roll era. The resulting list of 100 artists, published in two issues of Rolling Stone in 2004 and 2005, and updated in 2011, is a broad survey of rock history, spanning Sixties heroes (the Beatles) and modern insurgents (Eminem), and touching on early pioneers (Chuck Berry) and the bluesmen who made it all possible (Howlin’ Wolf).
The essays on these top 100 artists are by their peers: singers, producers and musicians. In these fan testimonials, indie rockers pay tribute to world-beating rappers (Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on Jay-Z), young pop stars honor stylistic godmothers (Britney Spears on Madonna) and Billy Joel admits that Elton John “kicks my ass on piano.” Rock & roll is now a music with a rich past. But at its best, it is still the sound of forward motion. As you read this book, remember: This is what we have to live up to.
25
Fats Domino
By Dr. John
After John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Fats Domino and his partner, Dave Bartholomew, were probably the greatest team of songwriters ever. They always had a simple melody, a hip set of chord changes and a cool groove. And their songs all had simple lyrics; that’s the key. There are no deep plots in Fats Domino songs: “Yes, it’s me, and I’m in love again/Had no lovin’ since you know when/You know I love you, yes I do/And I’m savin’ all my lovin’ just for you.” It don’t get no simpler than that.
Even when Fats Domino did songs by somebody else, it was still Fats. He could really lock in with his band and play those hard-driving boogie shuffles — it was pre-funk stuff, and it was New Orleans, and he did it all his way. One thing that most people miss, which he did on some of his biggest records, like “Blueberry Hill”: He could do piano rolls with both hands. A couple of guys, like Allen Toussaint, could do Fats to a T, but with Fats, there was brothsome little different thing. He was like Thelonious Monk that way. You can always tell when it’s Monk and when it’s somebody trying to play like Monk.
I give a lot of credit to Dave Bartholomew, Fats’ producer and songwriting partner. They were a team. Dave produced records perfect for Fats. He had the sense to go with the best-feeling take when they were recording. People would have missed something great about Fats if they had just heard the more “correct” takes — the ones without that extra off-the-wall thing that Fats would bring.
You can’t hardly hear the bass on some of Fats’ early records. Later, they started doubling the bass line with the guitar, and it made for a very distinctive sound. That became standard with Phil Spector. I don’t know if Phil picked it up from Fats or from somebody who picked it up from Fats, but it started with Fats. You can hear a lot of Fats in Jerry Lee Lewis. Anytime anybody plays a slow blues, the piano player will eventually get to something like Fats. I can’t tell you the number of times I played sessions and was asked specifically to do Fats. Eighty kajillion little bands all through the South — we all had to play Fats Domino songs. Everybody, everywhere.
Fats is old school to the max — he loved to work the house, do looooong shows and push the piano across the stage with his belly. That innocence is there in his music. He’s a good man, and people respond to that goodness. I don’t think it was about anything other than the tradition of working the house and what felt good to Fats.
When all the payola scandals were happening and it looked bad for rock & roll, Fats did an interview in some magazine. He said, “I don’t know what all the trouble is about us being a bad influence on teenagers. I’m just playing the same music I played all my life.” That’s what Fats was about. He didn’t look on what he did as special or different. He just did what Fats did.
ILLUSTRATION BY JODY HEWGILL
24
Jerry Lee Lewis
By Moby
I'd be curious to know how many pianos Jerry Lee Lewis has gone through in his lifetime. Whoever was responsible for keeping the piano in tune and making sure it didn't fall apart at Sun Studio must have wept every time he showed up to play. I don't know what switch got flipped in his brain when he was born that compelled him to play so fast and so hard, but I'm glad it got flipped.
There's a perhaps apocryphal story that when he and his cousin, the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, were children, they went to a roadhouse and listened through the window to some amazing R&B band. Jimmy Swaggart supposedly said, "This is the devil's music! We have to leave!" But Jerry Lee just stood there transfixed and couldn't tear himself away. He was an evangelist for the devil's music.
If you listen to his records, they sound more punk rock than just about anything any contemporary punk band is doing. His records sound faster than they actually are, and they sound louder than they actually are. If you listen to them on a crummy little stereo on low volume, they still sound like they're exploding out of the speakers.
Whether it's Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard or Gene Vincent, these guys were dripping sex and anarchy. Their records all have a sense of abandon, like they had given up all hope of commercial success or ever being respected, so they just wanted to play crazy music and get laid.
If I had a daughter, I wouldn't let her date a musician, because most of them are just too dumb. In Jerry Lee's case, if he were coming over for dinner, I would literally lock her up. The story of him marrying his 13-year-old cousin is unbearably sad. Elvis had just been drafted, Jerry Lee was about to tour England for the first time, and the scandal broke. He was never able to ascend to the throne that was rightfully his. And the piano faded because it was too big and too hard to mic. The beauty of the electric guitar is that it's small, portable, loud and easy to mic.
"Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On" are the iconic singles. But if you really want to understand Jerry Lee Lewis, find some video performance of him doing "Great Balls of Fire." It's pure, narcotic rock & roll excitement.
ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN SMITH
23
Bruce Springsteen
By Jackson Browne
In many ways, Bruce Springsteen is the embodiment of rock & roll. Combining strains of Appalachian music, rockabilly, blues and R&B, his work epitomizes rock's deepest values: desire, the need for freedom and the search to find yourself. All through his songs there is a generosity and a willingness to portray even the simplest aspects of our lives in a dramatic and committed way. The first time I heard him play was at a small club, the Bitter End in New York, where he did a guest set. It was just an amazing display of lyrical prowess. I asked him where he was from, and he sort of grinned and said he was from New Jersey.
The next time I saw him play it was with his band, the one with David Sancious in it. I'd never seen anybody do what he was doing: He would play acoustic guitar and dance all over the place, and the guitar wasn't plugged into anything. There wasn't this meticulous need to have every note heard. It filled that college gym with so much emotion that it didn't matter if you couldn't hear every note.
A year or so later I saw him play in L.A., with Max Weinberg, Clarence Clemons and Steve Van Zandt in the band, and it was even more dramatic — the use of lights and the way it was staged. There were these events built into the music. I went to see them the second night, and I guess I expected it to be the same thing, but it was completely different. It was obvious that they were drawing on a vocabulary. It was exhilarating, and at the bottom of it all there was all this joy and fun and a sense of brotherhood, of being outsiders who had tremendous power and a story to tell.
Bruce has been unafraid to take on the tasks associated with growing up. He's a family man, with kids and the same values and concerns as working-class Americans. It runs all through his work, the idea of finding that one person and making a life together. Look at "Rosalita": Her mother doesn't like him, her father doesn't like him, but he's coming for her. Or in "The River," where he gets Mary pregnant and for his 19th birthday he gets a union card and a wedding coat. That night they go to the river and dive in. For those of us who are ambivalent about marriage, the struggle for love in a world of impermanence is summed up by the two of them diving into that river at night. Bruce's songs are filled with these images, but they aren't exclusively the images of working-class people. It just happens to be where he's from.
Bruce has all kinds of influences, from Chuck Berry and Gary U.S. Bonds to Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. But he's also a lot like Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and James Dean — people whose most indistinct utterances have been magnified to communicate volumes. He is one of the few songwriters who works on a scale that is capable of handling the subject of our national grief and the need to find a response to an event like September 11th. His sense of music as a healing power, of band-as-church, has always been there. He's got his feet planted on either side of that great divide between rebellion and redemption.
ILLUSTRATION BY ANITA KUNZ
22
U2
By Chris Martin
I don't buy weekend tickets to Ireland and hang out in front of their gates, but U2 are the only band whose entire catalog I know by heart. The first song on The Unforgettable Fire, "A Sort of Homecoming," I know backward and forward — it's so rousing, brilliant and beautiful. It's one of the first songs I played to my unborn baby.
The first U2 album I ever heard was Achtung Baby. It was 1991, and I was 14 years old. Before that, I didn't even know what albums were. From that point, I worked backward — every six months, I'd get to buy a new U2 album. The sound they pioneered — the driving bass and drums underneath and those ethereal, effects-laden guitar tracks floating out from above — was nothing that had been heard before. They may be the only good anthemic rock band ever. Certainly they're the best.
What I love most about U2 is that the band is more important than any of its songs or albums. I love that they're still best mates and that they each play an integral role in one another's lives as friends. I love the way that they're not interchangeable — if Larry Mullen Jr. wants to go scuba diving for a week, the rest of the band can't do a thing. U2 — like Coldplay — maintain that all songs that appear on their albums are credited to the band. And they are the only band that's been around for more than 30 years with no member changes and no big splits.
It's amazing that the biggest band in the world has so much integrity and passion in its music. Our society is thoroughly screwed, fame is a ridiculous waste of time, and celebrity culture is disgusting. There are only a few people around brave enough to talk out against it, who use their fame in a good way. And every time I try, I feel like an idiot, because I see Bono actually getting things achieved. While everyone else was swearing at George Bush, Bono was the one who rubbed Bush's back and got a billion dollars for Africa. People can be so cynical — they don't like do-gooders — but Bono's attitude is, "I don't care what anybody thinks, I'm going to speak out." He's accomplished so much with Greenpeace, in Sarajevo, at the concert to shut down the Sellafield nuclear plant, and he still runs the gantlet. When the time came for Coldplay to think about fair trade, we took his lead to speak out regardless of what anyone may think. That's what we've learned from U2: You have to be brave enough to be yourself.
ILLUSTRATION BY DALE STEPHANOS
21
Otis Redding
By Steve Cropper
The first time we saw Otis Redding was in 1962, and he was driving a car for Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers out of Macon, Georgia. They had a moderate hit, an instrumental called "Love Twist," and they wanted to record a follow-up in Memphis with my band, Booker T. and the MGs. I saw this big guy get out from behind the wheel and go to the back of the truck and start unloading equipment. That was Otis. And we had no idea he was also a singer. In those days, instrumental groups always carried a singer so they could play the songs on the radio that the kids wanted to dance to.
We had a few minutes left at the end of the session, and Al Jackson, our drummer, said, "This guy with Johnny, he wants us to hear him sing." Booker had already left for the day, so I sat down at the piano, which I play only a little for writing. Otis said, "Just gimme those church things."
We call them triplets in music. I said, "What key?"
He said, "It don't matter."
He started singing "These Arms of Mine." And, man, my hair stood on end. Jim [Stewart, co-owner of Stax] came running out and said, "That's it! That's it! Where is everybody? We gotta get this on tape!" So I grabbed all the musicians who hadn't left already for their night gigs, and we recorded it right there. When you hear something that's better than anything you ever heard, you know it, and it was unanimous. We almost wore out the tape playing it afterward. "These Arms of Mine" was the first of 17 hit singles he had in a row.
Otis had the softness of Sam Cooke and the harshness of Little Richard, and he was his own man. He was also fabulous to be around, always 100 percent full of energy. So many singers in those days, with all due respect, had just been in the business too long. They were bitter from the way they were treated. But Otis didn't have that. He was probably the most nonprejudiced human being I ever met. He seemed to be big in every way: physically, in his talent, in his wisdom about other people. After he died, I was surprised to find out I was the same age as he was, because I looked up to him as an older brother.
When I wrote with Otis, my job was to help him finish his songs. He had so many ideas that I'd just pick one and say, "Let's do this," and we'd write all night long. "I Can't Turn You Loose" was just a riff I'd used on a few songs with the MGs. Otis worked it up with the horns in about 10 minutes as the last thing we did one night in the studio. Just a riff and one verse that he sings over and over. That's all it is. With Otis, it was all about feeling and expression. Most of his songs had just two or three chord changes, so there wasn't a lot of music there. The dynamics, the energy, the way we attacked it — that's hard to teach. So many things now are computer-generated. They start at one level and they stop at the same level, so there isn't much dynamic, even if there are a lot of different sounds.
I miss Otis. I miss him as much now as I did after we lost him. I've been to the lake in Madison, Wisconsin, where they have the plaque. The best explanation I've read is that his plane missed the runway on the first approach, and it circled around over the lake when the wings iced up. That was December 10th, 1967. It's been difficult for me to listen to Otis since then. It brings back too many memories, all great except for the end.
ILLUSTRATION BY MARK SUMMERS
20
Bo Diddley
By Iggy Pop
Bo Diddley's music is enormous. It's deeply moving. It has the sultry, sexual power of Africa. There's all sorts of mystery in that sound. People listen to Bo Diddley recordings and think, "Oh, you can just go bonk-de-bonk-bonk, de-bonk-bonk, and you got a Bo Diddley beat." But it isn't that easy. He played really simple things but with incredible authority. I first heard him on a Rolling Stones album, on their cover of "Mona." It was such a great song; I looked at the credits and it said "Ellas McDaniel," and I thought, "Who the hell is that?" But when I wanted to get into songwriting, he was the key for me. I didn't have a lot of vocal range, and I didn't know a lot of chords on the guitar. So I was looking for a way to write, and there he was, writing very complete, very memorable songs without a lot of fuss. They weren't florid. He never bothered to change the chord, for one thing — which is very heavy-metal! It's hypnotic. And, of course, there's the attitude, a chin-up, chest-out sort of thing. He was a bull; he had a bullish quality to everything he did and everything he played. Vocally, he reminds me of gutbucket Delta blues: Muddy Waters, but brought to town, rocked up. And his voice is so damn loud. It's just a huge voice, and he's got a big, deep shout.
Then there's the way he played the guitar. First of all, Bo's hands were about a foot long from the wrist to the tip of the finger. He really controlled his guitar. Bo plays his instrument, and the way the rhythm clicks is unique. What seems to pass for guitar more and more now is some wimp with a fuzz box. Somewhere around Hendrix, the line was crossed. Hendrix had both: He had the hands, and he had the fuzz box. Now all they have is the fuzz box — a lot of them.
Bo Diddley had a huge impact on Sixties rock. The Stones covered Bo Diddley, and the Yardbirds did "I'm a Man," and the Pretty Things did his song "Pretty Thing." My band in high school, the Iguanas, did a few of his songs, including "Road Runner," and you can hear a bit of him in the Stooges. You can be damn well sure that Jack White has studied Bo's records.
I've had a little personal experience with Bo. I worked with him in Vegas once, and I kept running into him on airplanes in the Eighties and Nineties — always in first class, always alone, always with a roll bag, his police hat and his sheriff's badge. I think Bo and Chuck Berry have both suffered the trivialization of people who are covered too much. His influence is everywhere, but his personal career could have used a boost. Some car or jeans company needs to put a track of his in a commercial so a lot of young dudes and dudettes can go, "Whoa — that's rockin'!"
ILLUSTRATION BY JOSIE JAMMET
19
The Velvet Underground
By Julian Casablancas
When you listen to a classic-rock station today, why don't they play the Velvet Underground? Why is it always Boston and Led Zeppelin? And why are the Rolling Stones so much more popular than the Velvets? OK, I understand why the Stones are more popular. But there is also a part of me that has always felt that it should have been the other way around. The Velvet Underground were way ahead of their time. And their music was weird. But it also made so much sense to me. I couldn't believe this wasn't the most popular music ever made.
Listening to those four studio albums now is like reading a good book that takes place in a distant time. When I hear The Velvet Underground and Nico or Loaded, I feel like I'm in Andy Warhol's Factory in the 1960s or hanging out at Max's Kansas City. The way Lou Reed wrote and sang about drugs and sex, about the people around him — it was so matter-of-fact. I believed every word of "Heroin." Reed could be romantic in the way he portrayed these crazy situations, but he was also intensely real. It was poetry and journalism.
A lot of people associate the Velvets with feedback and noise. White Light/White Heat is the kind of record you have to be in the mood for. You have to be in a shitty bar, in a really shitty mood. But the Velvets created some very beautiful music, too: "Sunday Morning," with John Cale's viola; "Candy Says"; "All Tomorrow's Parties" — I can't imagine that song without Nico singing it, although I thought Maureen Tucker had a cool voice, as well as being a really cool drummer. She had a femininity. I thought she sounded hotter than Nico.
In the beginning, the Strokes definitely drew from the vibe of the Velvets. I listened to Loaded all the time when we started the band, while I was writing my first songs. For four solid months, it was just Loaded and this Beach Boys greatest-hits record, Made in the U.S.A. A lot of our guitar tones are based on what Reed and Sterling Morrison did. I honestly wish we could have copied them more. We didn't come close enough. But that was cool, because it became more of our own thing. Which is something else I got from the Velvets. They taught me just to be myself.
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREA VENTURA
18
Marvin Gaye
By Smokey Robinson
At Motown, Marvin was one of the main characters in the greatest musical story ever told. Prior to that, nothing quite like Motown had ever existed — all those songwriters, singers, producers working and growing together, part family, part business — and I doubt seriously if it will ever happen like that again. And there's no question that Marvin will always be a huge part of the Motown legacy.
When Marvin first came to Motown, he was the drummer on all the early hits I had with the Miracles. He and I became close friends — he was my brother, really — and I did a lot of production and wrote a lot of songs for him: "Ain't That Peculiar," "I'll Be Doggone." Of course, that means that I spent a lot of time waiting for Marvin. See, Marvin was basically late coming to the studio all the time. But I never minded, because I knew that whenever Marvin did get there, he was going to sing my song in a way that I had never imagined it. He would Marvinize my songs, and I loved it. Marvin could sing anything, from gospel to gutbucket blues to jazz to pop.
But Marvin was much more than just a great singer. He was a great record maker, a gifted songwriter, a deep thinker — a real artist in the true sense. What's Going On is the most profound musical statement in my lifetime. It never gets dated. I still remember when I would go by Marvin's house and he was working on it, he would say, "Smoke, this album is being written by God, and I'm just the instrument that he's writing it through."
Marvin really had it all — that voice, that soul, that look, too. He was one very handsome man. He had sex appeal and his music was sexy. You couldn't blame women for falling in love with Marvin.
I said before that when you worked with Marvin, it meant you were waiting for Marvin. But Marvin was always worth the wait. I suppose that in a way, I'm still waiting for Marvin.
ILLUSTRATION BY SHAWN BARBER
17
Muddy Waters
By Billy Gibbons
Muddy and his band opened for ZZ Top on a tour in 1981. This was over 40 years after his first recordings, and that band could still play the blues, not just as seasoned pros but with the same enthusiasm Muddy had when he started out. When he sang that his mojo was working, you could tell his mojo had not slowed down at all. He was satisfied, composed, self-contained. If he had an opinion on a subject, he didn't allow a whole lot of latitude to be convinced otherwise. If he was bitter about the way he'd been treated by record companies, he never showed it. We talked to him a lot as we traveled, when he wasn't chasing young girls through the airport. He told us a story once about his friends Freddie King and Little Walter walking from Dallas to Chicago. I've always had that image in my mind of two guys walking from the South to the North. Everyone else in the great migration took the train. I hope they weren't carrying their equipment.
People call his sound raw and dirty and gritty, but it wasn't particularly loud. It just sounded that way. A guitar amplifier in the Fifties was maybe the size of a tabletop radio. To be heard over a party, you had to crank that thing as loud as it would go. And then you left behind all semblance of circuit design and entered the elegant field of distortion that made everything so much deeper. If you didn't have a big band with 20 guys, you had 20 watts.
I first heard Muddy Waters through two friends of mine, Walter Baldwin and Steve Roberts, in junior high in 1962 or '63. We grew up together and jumped on every piece of musical madness we could find. Most people in my generation probably discovered Muddy backwards from the Rolling Stones, who got their name from a Muddy song. I heard him just before the Stones got here, but it was all good, whether you discovered it backwards, forwards or sideways.
Anyway, I picked up the guitar because of Muddy Waters as much as anyone. Jimmy Reed, Howlin' Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Albert King, B.B. King, Freddie King — they all had an impact too, but they all followed Muddy Waters. He started out in Mississippi playing acoustic, using his thumb to play the bass line and a real bottleneck slide for melody on the upper strings. The slide guitar got the nuance of the human voice better than any other instrument. Basically, it was a Robert Johnson thing, and Muddy took it to Chicago, electrified it, added a bass player and a harp with a good backbeat, and you had a party. His bands were always powerhouses, and his voice had an amazing depth.
The remarkable thing is that the blues never died out, ever. It's been rediscovered every 10 years since the Twenties. Nobody can do what Muddy did, but his energy is still fueling that fire. You can hear his enthusiasm in bands like the White Stripes or the Black Keys. I'd recommend his first album, The Best of Muddy Waters, with the early Chess singles, to anyone. Every track is worthy. The albums Johnny Winter produced in the late Seventies, Hard Again and I'm Ready, are also terrific.
It was all supposed to be disposable. Just noise on a shellac disc. And here we are in the 21st century still trying to figure out how such a simple art form could be so complicated and subtle. It's still firing brain synapses around the world. You've got the Japanese Muddy Waters Society corresponding with fans in Sweden and England, and his music can still propel a party in the U.S. He made three chords sound deep, and they are.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLES MILLER
16
Sam Cooke
By Art Garfunkel
Sam Cooke was grounded in a very straightforward singing style: It was pure, beautiful and open-throated, extraordinarily direct and unapologetic. Let's say you're going to sing "I love you for sentimental reasons." How do you hit that "I"? Do you slur into it? Do you put in a little hidden "h"? The attack on that vowel sound is the tip-off to how bold a singer is. If you pour on the letter "i" from the back of your throat, the listener gets that there is no fudge in the first thousandth of a second. There's just confidence from the singer, that he knows the pitch, and here's the sound. That's what Sam was great at. He had guts as a singer.
Sam also threw a lot of notes at you. Today you hear everyone doing those melismatic notes that Mariah Carey made popular. Sam was the first guy I remember singing that way. When he's singing, "I love you for sentimental reasons/I hope you do believe me," the next line should be, "I've given you my heart." But he goes, "I've given you my-my-mah-muh-my heart/Given you my heart because I need you." It's as if he's saying, "Now that I've sung the word, I'm going to sing it again, because I've got all this feeling in my heart that demands expression." He gave us so much that he could have given us less, and that would've been enough, but he put in all those extra notes, as in "You Send Me," where he's scatting between the lines: "I know, I know, I know, when you hold me."
He had fabulous chops, but at the same time fabulous taste. I never felt that he was overdoing it, as I often feel with singers today. He stayed rhythmic and fluty and floaty; he always showed brilliant vocal control.
I must have sung "You Send Me" to myself walking up and down stairwells at least a thousand times. It was on the charts right when I was having my first little success with Paul Simon as Tom and Jerry. Our "Hey, Schoolgirl" was on the charts with "You Send Me" and "Jailhouse Rock." "Jingle Bell Rock" had just come out. I was just a kid, calling on radio stations for promotional purposes, and all I heard was "You Send Me." Sam was great to sing along with. He was my hero.
There was a deep sense of goodness about Sam. His father was a minister, and he obviously had spent a lot of time in church. His first success came early as a gospel singer, and he expanded into R&B and pop. It looked like he was making the right choices in life until he got shot by the night manager of a motel. You wonder who he had fallen in with.
Paul Simon, James Taylor and I covered "Wonderful World," which he also wrote. It was a teenage short story like Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen" or "School Days." You're stroking the teenager's sense of style with those pop songs. Sam was a master of that idiom. "Wonderful World" was unsophisticated but very Tin Pan Alley.
Sam came along before the album was discovered as an art form. You think of him in terms of songs. My favorites are "Sad Mood," "Wonderful World," "Summertime," "(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons" and "You Send Me." I think that "A Change Is Gonna Come" shows where he could have gone if he had lived through the Sixties, doing Marvin Gaye kind of lyrics about the society we live in. It was a tremendous loss when he was killed. I remember thinking, "Oh, that can't be." He was such a rising star, a fabulous singer with intelligence. And that brilliant smile.
I used to think he was just a great singer. Now I think he's better than that. Almost nobody since then can touch him.
ILLUSTRATION BY STERLING HUNDLEY
15
Stevie Wonder
By Elton John
Let me put it this way: Wherever I go in the world, I always take a copy of Songs in the Key of Life. For me, it's the best album ever made, and I'm always left in awe after I listen to it. When people in decades and centuries to come talk about the history of music, they will talk about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. Stevie came out of the golden age of Motown, when they were putting out the best R&B records in the world from Detroit, and he evolved into an amazing songwriter and a genuine musical force of nature.
He's so multitalented that it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes him one of the greatest ever. But first, there's that voice. Along with Ray Charles, he's the greatest R&B singer who ever lived. Nobody can sing like he does. I know: I actually recorded a version of "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" when I was young, and I really had to squeeze my balls to get those high notes.
As a keyboard player, I've played with him over the years, and he never ceases to amaze me, the stuff he comes up with. He can play anything — check out his harmonica playing. I think I'm a pretty good musician, but he's in a whole other league. He could play with Charlie Parker or John Coltrane and hold his own.
Stevie's Sixties hits are amazing — joyful music that still sounds great — but then, starting in the Seventies, he hit a run of albums that's unsurpassed in music history, from Talking Book to Songs in the Key of Life. I think the elite — the most major of major artists — often have a period when they can do no wrong. It happened to Prince, too, who is like Stevie in some ways. He has got an immeasurable amount of talent — so much talent that sometimes it can seem like he's kind of lost.
Stevie is an amazingly positive, peaceful man. When you ask him to do something, he is generous. He loves music. He loves to play. When he comes into a room, people adore him. And there aren't many artists like that. People admire you and they like your records, but they don't want to stand up and hug you. But this man is a good man. He tries to use his music to do good. His message, I think, is about love, and in the world we live in today, that message does shine through.
ILLUSTRATION BY MARK STUTZMAN
14
Led Zeppelin
By Dave Grohl
Heavy metal would not exist without Led Zeppelin, and if it did, it would suck. Led Zeppelin were more than just a band — they were the perfect combination of the most intense elements: passion and mystery and expertise. It always seemed like Led Zeppelin were searching for something. They weren't content being in one place, and they were always trying something new. They could do anything, and I believe they would have done everything if they hadn't been cut short by John Bonham's death. Zeppelin served as a great escape from a lot of things. There was a fantasy element to everything they did, and it was such a major part of what made them important. It's hard to imagine the audience for all those Lord of the Rings movies if it wasn't for Zeppelin.
They were never critically acclaimed in their day, because they were too experimental and they were too fringe. In 1969 and '70, there was some freaky shit going on, but Zeppelin were the freakiest. I consider Jimmy Page freakier than Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix was a genius on fire, whereas Page was a genius possessed. Zeppelin concerts and albums were like exorcisms for them. People had their asses blown out by Hendrix and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, but Page took it to a whole new level, and he did it in such a beautifully human and imperfect way. He plays the guitar like an old bluesman on acid. When I listen to Zeppelin bootlegs, his solos can make me laugh or they can make me tear up. Any live version of "Since I've Been Loving You" will bring you to tears and fill you with joy all at once. Page doesn't just use his guitar as an instrument — he uses it like it's some sort of emotional translator.
John Bonham played the drums like someone who didn't know what was going to happen next — like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff. No one has come close to that since, and I don't think anybody ever will. I think he will forever be the greatest drummer of all time. You have no idea how much he influenced me. I spent years in my bedroom — literally fucking years — listening to Bonham's drums and trying to emulate his swing or his behind-the-beat swagger or his speed or power. Not just memorizing what he did on those albums but getting myself into a place where I would have the same instinctual direction as he had. I have John Bonham tattoos all over my body — on my wrists, my arms, my shoulders. I gave myself one when I was 15. It's the three circles that were his insignia on Zeppelin IV and on the front of his kick drum.
"Black Dog," from Zeppelin IV, is what Led Zeppelin were all about in their most rocking moments, a perfect example of their true might. It didn't have to be really distorted or really fast, it just had to be Zeppelin, and it was really heavy. Then there's Zeppelin's sensitive side — something people overlook, because we think of them as rock beasts, but Zeppelin III was full of gentle beauty. That was the soundtrack to me dropping out of high school. I listened to it every single day in my VW bug, while I contemplated my direction in life. That album, for whatever reason, saved some light in me that I still have.
I heard them for the first time on AM radio in the Seventies, right around the time that "Stairway to Heaven" was so popular. I was six or seven years old, which is when I'd just started discovering music. But it wasn't until I was a teenager that I discovered the first two Zeppelin records, which were handed down to me from the real stoners. We had a lot of those in the suburbs of Virginia, and a lot of muscle cars and keggers and Zeppelin and acid and weed. Somehow they all went hand in hand. To me, Zeppelin were spiritually inspirational. I was going to Catholic school and questioning God, but I believed in Led Zeppelin. I wasn't really buying into this Christianity thing, but I had faith in Led Zeppelin as a spiritual entity. They showed me that human beings could channel this music somehow and that it was coming from somewhere. It wasn't coming from a songbook. It wasn't coming from a producer. It wasn't coming from an instructor. It was coming from four musicians taking music to places it hadn't been before — it's like it was coming from somewhere else. That's why they're the greatest rock & roll band of all time. It couldn't have happened any other way.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTIAN CLAYTON
13
Buddy Holly
By John Mellencamp
Buddy Holly was a complete and utter hillbilly. I'm very proud of that. So much of our musical heritage is from the country. People always ask me, "Why do you stay in Indiana?" Well, I have to. Just about every song, every sound that we emulate and listen to was created by a hillbilly, born out of the frustration of a small town where there ain't much to do in the evening. That's one thing that I loved about Buddy Holly.
Buddy Holly was one of the first great singer-songwriters — he wrote his own material and in the end was producing it, too. He came from such a rural area and was able to speak to so many people in so many locations. He was one of the first to get away from the Tin Pan Alley songwriting factory and communicate directly, honestly with his audience.
I was just a little kid when I first heard Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue." You may not understand what it was like being about nine years old in 1957 or '58, but it was quite a treat. All of this music was just coming out of nowhere — Memphis and Texas. I was in a band when I was in sixth grade, and we played "Not Fade Away." You shouldn't even be in a band if you haven't played that song. It's two chords, beautiful melody, with a nice message. Holly's songs never really left my consciousness. When I set up my iPod, there he was, those same songs that I've heard for all these years. They sound just as good as the first time I heard them.
Holly's melodies and arrangements were a huge influence on the Beatles. With the whirlwind they were on in 1964, the first thing John Lennon asked when he got to The Ed Sullivan Show was, "Is this the stage that Buddy Holly played on?" That shows a lot of quiet admiration. Listen to the songs on the first three Beatles albums. Take their voices off, and it's Buddy Holly. Same with the Rolling Stones.
Record companies encourage young artists to copy what's been there before. But nobody was pushing Holly in any direction. That was just all him and his instincts. Those songs are great, and some are only a minute and 25 seconds long. Think about delivering a song like that today. The magic that Buddy Holly created was nothing short of a miracle. The fact that he died at 22 is just ridiculous. That tells you all you need to know about just how focused and visionary he was.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS KASCH
12
The Beach Boys
By Lindsey Buckingham
The Beach Boys showed the way, and not just to California. Sure, they may have sold the California Dream to a lot of people, but for me, it was Brian Wilson showing how far you might have to go in order to make your own musical dream come true.
In the beginning, I was someone who grew up in California and loved the early music that he and the Beach Boys made. Later, I would relate to Brian's struggle as an artist against a machine that tended toward serving the bottom line — the industry attitude that if it works, run it into the ground. Music meant much more to him than that. He was trying to do something so much bigger than that with his teenage symphonies to God. In the process, he really rocked the boat and changed the world.
When the Beach Boys started, Brian was taking European sensibilities and infusing them into a Chuck Berry format. Those harmonies were based on the Four Freshmen, with a little church element added to it. He put all that on top of Chuck Berry rock & roll, and the result sounded so fresh. I remember hearing "Surfin' Safari" first when I was in sixth grade. It had the beat, the sense of joy, that explosion rock & roll gave to a lot of us. But it also had this incredible lift, this amazing kind of chemical reaction that seemed to happen inside you when you heard it.
Pet Sounds is the acknowledged masterpiece, and it's everything it's said to be, with Brian taking some of the influences he got from Phil Spector and making something all his own. But even before that there's Side Two of The Beach Boys Today!, which is really just one ballad after another and is for me one of the great sides on a rock album. Those are beautiful numbers — "Please Let Me Wonder," "Kiss Me Baby," "She Knows Me Too Well," "In the Back of My Mind" — that foreshadow Brian's angst and start exposing his vulnerability. A lot of what you find later on Pet Sounds or Smile, you could find in a different form early on.
Today it's nice to see that Brian's in a place where he can do what he wants without the pressure of selling or of having to be the support system for so many others. Because he gave the rest of us more than his fair share of good vibrations.
ILLUSTRATION BY MARK GAGNON
11
Bob Marley
By Wyclef Jean
What separates Bob Marley from so many other great songwriters? They don't know what it's like for rain to seep into their house. They wouldn't know what to do without their microwaves and stoves — to make a fire with wood and cook their fish next to the ocean. Marley came from the poverty and injustice in Jamaica, and that manifested itself in his rebel sound. The people were his inspiration. Straight up. Like John Lennon, he brought the idea that through music, empowerment and words, you can really come up with world peace. But it's hard to compare him to other musicians, because music was just one part of what he was. He was also a humanitarian and a revolutionary. His impact on Jamaican politics was so strong, there was an assassination attempt on his life. Marley was like Moses. When Moses spoke, people moved. When Marley spoke, they moved as well.
Marley almost single-handedly brought reggae to the world. When I was growing up in Haiti — where my father was a missionary and a church minister — we could barely get away with listening to Christian rock and definitely couldn't get away with any rap. When I was 14, I slipped on "Exodus," and my dad, who didn't speak English very well, asked me, "What's this song about?" I told him it was biblical, and it was about movement. The minute it reached his ears — the minute Marley's music reaches anybody's ears — he was automatically grooving. The vibe goes straight to your brain.
"Redemption Song" transcends time. "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery/ None but ourselves can free our minds/Have no fear for atomic energy/'Cause none of them can stop the time." It will mean the same thing in the year 3014. Today, people struggle to find what's real. Everything has become so synthetic that a lot of people, all they want is to grasp onto hope. The reason people still throw on Bob Marley T-shirts is because his music is one of the few real things left to grasp onto.
ILLUSTRATION BY MARCO VENTURA
10
Ray Charles
Ray Charles is proof that the best music crosses all boundaries, reaches all denominations. He could do any type of music, and he always stayed true to himself. It's all about his soul.
His music first hit me when I heard a live version of "What'd I Say" on American Forces Network in Germany, which I used to listen to late at night. Then I started buying his singles. His sound was stunning — it was the blues, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was swing — it was all the stuff I was listening to before that but rolled into one amazing, soulful thing.
As a singer, Ray Charles didn't phrase like anyone else. He didn't put the time where you thought it was gonna be, but it was always perfect, always right. He knew how to play with time, like any great jazzman. But there was more to him than that voice — he was also writing these incredible songs. He was a great musician, a great record maker, a great producer and a wonderful arranger.
There's a reason they called Ray Charles "the Genius." Think of how he reinvented country music in a way that worked for him. He showed there are no limitations, not for someone as good as he is. Whatever Ray Charles did, whatever he touched, he made it his own. He's his own genre. It's all Ray Charles music now.
I always learn something from him. It's music that set a tough standard. For me, two albums that stand out are Ray Charles at Newport and Ray Charles in Person. Then there's Genius + Soul = Jazz with the Basie orchestra and Quincy Jones. And of course Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. There's so much to live up to — these days, you almost have to go backward to go forward.
In 2004, I did a duet with him on one of my songs, "Crazy Love." It felt fantastic. I always loved his singing, but I also connected with him on a soul level. I just felt his emotion. People like Ray Charles — and Sam Cooke, Bobby Bland and Solomon Burke — defined what soul was for me. It wasn't just the singing — it was what went into the singing. These were guys who put their souls on the line.
This music is way beyond marketing. This music is global, and its appeal is universal. Ray Charles changed music just by being himself — by doing what he did and translating it to millions of people with the force of his soul. That's his legacy. I think that the music of Ray Charles will probably outlive us all — at least I hope that it will.
ILLUSTRATION BY ANITA KUNZ
9
Aretha Franklin
As a producer, I almost always addressed phrasing and enunciation with the singer, but in Aretha's case, there was nothing I could tell her. I would only be getting in her way. Nowadays, singers who want to be extra soulful overdo melisma. Aretha only used it a touch and used it gloriously because her taste was impeccable. She never went to the wrong place.
It wasn't her gospel training. Most young African-American singers get their musical training in church. Training can give you form, can give you tradition, can give you the cadence. When genius gets good training, it can expedite the process, but training isn't genius. Genius is who she is.
"Respect" had the biggest impact, with overtones for the civil rights movement and gender equality. It was an appeal for dignity combined with a blatant lubricity. There are songs that are a call to action. There are love songs. There are sex songs. But it's hard to think of another song where all those elements are combined.
Aretha wrote most of her material or selected the songs herself, working out the arrangements at home and using her piano to provide the texture. In this case, she just had the idea that she wanted to embellish Otis Redding's song. When she walked into the studio, it was already worked out in her head.
Otis came up to my office right before "Respect" was released, and I played him the tape. He said, "She done took my song." He said it benignly and ruefully. He knew the identity of the song was slipping away from him to her.
Aretha had a minor career at Columbia before coming to Atlantic. I don't think Columbia let her play the piano much. It's always been my belief that when a singer plays an instrument, you should let them play it on the record, even if the singer is not a virtuoso, because they're bringing another element to the recording. In Aretha's case, there was no compromise in quality. She was a brilliant pianist.
It is part of her genius. No one can copy her. She's all alone in her greatness.
ILLUSTRATION BY TIM O'BRIEN
8
Little Richard
A lot of people call me the architect of rock & roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true. You've got to remember, I was already known back in 1951. I was recording for RCA-Victor — if you were black, it was called Camden Records — before Elvis. Then I recorded for Peacock in Houston. Then Specialty Records bought me from Peacock — I think they paid $500 for me — and my first Specialty record was a hit in 1956: "Tutti Frutti." It was a hit worldwide. I felt I had arrived, you know? We started touring everywhere immediately. We traveled in cars. Back in that time, the racism was so heavy, you couldn't go in the hotels, so most times you slept in your car. You ate in your car. You got to the date, and you dressed in your car. I had a Cadillac. That's what the star rode in.
You remember the way that Liberace dressed onstage? I was dressing like that all the time, very flamboyantly, and I was wearing the pancake makeup. A lot of the other performers at that time — the Cadillacs, the Coasters, the Drifters — they were wearing makeup, too, but they didn't have any makeup kit. They had a sponge and a little compact in their pocket. I had a kit. Everybody started calling me gay.
People called rock & roll "African music." They called it "voodoo music." They said that it would drive the kids insane. They said that it was just a flash in the pan — the same thing that they always used to say about hip-hop. Only it was worse back then, because, you have to remember, I was the first black artist whose records the white kids were starting to buy. And the parents were really bitter about me. We played places where they told us not to come back, because the kids got so wild. They were tearing up the streets and throwing bottles and jumping off the theater balconies at shows. At that time, the white kids had to be up in the balcony — they were "white spectators." But then they'd leap over the balcony to get downstairs where the black kids were.
I didn't get paid — most dates I didn't get paid. And I've never gotten money from most of those records. And I made those records: In the studio, they'd just give me a bunch of words, I'd make up a song! The rhythm and everything. "Good Golly Miss Molly"! And I didn't get a dime for it. Michael Jackson owned the Specialty stuff. He offered me a job with his publishing company once, for the rest of my life, as a writer. At the time, I didn't take it. I wish I had now.
I wish a lot of things had been different. I don't think I ever got what I really deserved.
I appreciate being picked one of the top 100 performers, but who is number one and who is number two doesn't matter to me anymore. Because it won't be who I think it should be. The Rolling Stones started with me, but they're going to always be in front of me. The Beatles started with me — at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, before they ever made an album — but they're going to always be in front of me. James Brown, Jimi Hendrix — these people started with me. I fed them, I talked to them, and they're going to always be in front of me.
But it's a joy just to still be here. I think that when people want joy and fun and happiness, they want to hear the old-time rock & roll. And I'm just glad I was a part of that.
ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLES MILLER
7
James Brown
By Rick Rubin
In one sense, James Brown is like Johnny Cash. Johnny is considered one of the kings of country music, but there are a lot of people who like Johnny but don't like country music. It's the same with James Brown and R&B. His music is singular — the feel and tone of it. James Brown is his own genre. He was a great editor — as a songwriter, producer and bandleader. He kept things sparse. He knew that was important. And he had the best players, the funkiest of all bands. If Clyde Stubblefield had been drumming on a Motown session, they would not have let him play what he did with James on "Funky Drummer." James' vision allowed that music to get out. And the music always came from the groove, whereas for so many R&B and Motown artists at the time it was more about conventional songs. James Brown's songs are not conventional. "I Got You," "Out of Sight" — they are ultimately vehicles for unique, even bizarre grooves.
The first big record in hip-hop that used a Brown sample was Eric B. and Rakim's "Eric B. Is President." That opened the floodgates for people to sample Brown. I can't remember ever using a James Brown sample on my early records with LL Cool J or the Beastie Boys, but I wanted to make records that felt as good as Brown's, and I didn't want to do it by sampling or copying him. For me, it was about understanding the feeling you get when you listen to those grooves, figuring out how to achieve that with drum machines.
That feeling was something that the Red Hot Chili Peppers and I worked on for BloodSugarSexMagik. We used Brown's idea that all the musicians didn't have to be playing at the same time. Let the bass have its moment; don't be afraid to start a song with just guitar or break it down to just drums and guitar. Those are the sort of dynamics you hear on Brown's records.
I remember going to Minneapolis to visit Prince years ago, sitting in an office waiting for him — and there was an endless loop of James Brown's performance in the 1964 concert film The T.A.M.I. Show running. That may be the single greatest rock & roll performance ever captured on film. You have the Rolling Stones on the same stage, all of the important rock acts of the day — and James Brown comes out and destroys them. It's unbelievable how much he outclasses everyone else in the film.
I first saw James Brown around 1980, between my junior and senior years in high school. It was in Boston. It was in a catering hall, with folding chairs. And it was one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. His dancing and singing were incredible, and he played a Hammond B3 organ tufted with red leather, with "Godfather" in studs written across the front.
Regardless of what went on in his personal life, his legacy is secure. He certainly did things along the way where you can't help wondering, "What's going on?" But the good stuff comes from these one-of-a-kind people. These people are just touched by God. They are special. And James Brown is one of them. His legend will loom large, because the rhythm of life is in there.
ILLUSTRATION BY CYNTHIA VON BUHLER
6
Jimi Hendrix
By John Mayer
Jimi Hendrix is one of those extraordinary hubs of music where everybody lands at some point. Every musician passes through Hendrix International Airport eventually. He is the common denominator of every style of popular music. Was he a bluesman? Listen to "Voodoo Chile" and you'll hear some of the eeriest blues you can find. Was he a rock musician? He used volume as a device. That's rock. Was he a sensitive singer-songwriter? In "Bold As Love," he sings, "My yellow in this case is not so mellow/In fact I'm trying to say it's frightened like me" — that is a man who knows the shape of his heart.
So often, he's portrayed as a loud, psychedelic rock star lighting his guitar on fire. But when I think of Hendrix, I think of some of the most placid, lovely guitar sounds on songs like "One Rainy Wish," "Little Wing" and "Drifting." "Little Wing" is painfully short and painfully beautiful. It's like your grandfather coming back from the dead and hanging out with you for a couple of minutes and then going away. It's perfect, then it's gone.
I think the reason musicians love Hendrix's playing so much is that the language of it was so native to his head and heart. He had a secret relationship with playing the guitar, and though it was incredibly technical and based in theory, it was his theory. All you heard was the color. The math is what's been applied ever since.
I discovered Hendrix by way of Stevie Ray Vaughan. I heard Stevie Ray do "Little Wing," and I started working my way backward to Hendrix. The first Hendrix record I bought was Axis: Bold As Love, because it had "Little Wing" on it. I remember staring at the album cover for hours. Then I remember spending months listening to Electric Ladyland, which was very creepy. There's something dark about it in certain places that maybe Hendrix was too honest to hide.
Hendrix invented a kind of cool. The cool of a big conch-shell belt. The cool of boots that your jeans are tucked into. If Jimi Hendrix is an influence on somebody, you can immediately tell. Give me a guy who's got some kind of weird-ass goatee and an applejack hat, and you just go, "He got to you, didn't he?"
Hendrix has the allure of the tragic figure: We all wish we were genius enough to die before we're 28. People want to paint him as this lonely, shy figure who managed to let himself open up on the stage and play straight colors through the crowd. There's something heroic about it, but there's nothing human about it. Everybody is so caught up in his otherworldliness. I prefer to think about his human side. He was a man who had a Social Security number, not an alien. The merchandising companies put Jimi Hendrix's face on a tie-dyed T-shirt, and somehow that's what he became. But when I listen to Hendrix, I just hear a man, and that's when it's most beautiful — when you remember that another human being was capable of what he achieved. Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix. However far you stop on your climb to be like him, that's who you are.
ILLUSTRATION BY SKIP LIEPKE
5
Chuck Berry
By Joe Perry
Like a lot of guitarists of my generation, I first heard Chuck Berry because of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I was so blown away by the way those bands were playing these hardcore rock & roll songs like “Roll Over Beethoven” and “Around and Around.” I’d looked at the labels, under the song titles. I’d seen the name “Chuck Berry.” But I was fortunate enough, again like a lot of guys from my generation, to have a friend who had an older brother, who had the original records: “If you like the Stones, wait until you hear this!” I heard Chuck Berry Is On Top — and I really freaked out! That feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach, in the hair on the back of my neck: I got more of it from Chuck Berry than from anybody else.
It’s not so much what he played — it’s what he didn’t play. His music is very economical. His guitar leads drove the rhythm, as opposed to laying over the top. The economy of his licks and his leads — they pushed the song along. And he would build his solos so there was a nice little statement taking the song to a new place, so you’re ready for the next verse.
As a songwriter, Chuck Berry is like the Ernest Hemingway of rock & roll. He gets right to the point. He tells a story in short sentences. You get a great picture in your mind of what’s going on, in a very short amount of space, in well-picked words. He was also very smart: He knew that if he was going to break into the mainstream, he had to appeal to white teenagers. Which he did. Everything in those songs is about teenagers. I think he knew he could have had his own success on the R&B charts, but he wanted to get out of there and go big time.
He was also celebrating the music and lifestyle of rock & roll in songs like “Johnny B. Goode” and “School Days” — how anybody could make a guitar sound like the ring of a bell. Anytime you put the words “rock & roll” in a lyric, you have to be careful. But he did it perfectly. “Johnny B. Goode” is probably the most covered song ever. Bar bands, garage bands — everybody plays it. And so many bands play it badly. As much fun as it is to play, it’s also easy to destroy it. But it was probably the first Chuck Berry song I learned. It hits people on all levels: lyric, melody, tempo, riff.
It’s funny — when my son, Roman, was 12, he came back from his guitar lesson one day and I said, “What song were you learning today?” He said, “We’re learning ‘Johnny B. Goode.'” That’s the essence of the appeal of Chuck Berry. When you’re a young guitar player now, you’re confronted by all these guys: Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page. But you can sit down and get your guitar to sound like Chuck Berry in a very short amount of time.
The other thing is, Chuck Berry was a showman: playing the guitar behind his head and between his legs, doing the duckwalk. It’s not like you could close your eyes and hear his playing suffer because of it. He was able to do all that stuff and make it look like it was so easy and natural.
I still listen to Chuck Berry Is On Top. The whole thing just rocks out. That’s why I love it — for the same reason I love AC/DC records. They just don’t stop. That was another thing he did: He stayed in that groove. He could have done one or two of those “Johnny B. Goode”-type songs, or a couple like “Maybellene,” then gone off and done whatever. But he stayed in that place, that groove, and made it his own.
I also have a bunch of different compilations, and I hear the direct influence on me. The way he phrases things, that double-note stop, where you get the two notes bending against each other and they make that rock & roll sound — that’s what I hear when I listen back to a lot of my solos. It’s a little bit of technique, but it’s mostly phrasing.
And kids today are playing the same three chords, trying to play in that same style. Turn the guitars up, and it’s punk rock. It’s the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. I hear it in the White Stripes, too.
People will always cover Chuck Berry songs. When bands go do their homework, they will have to listen to Chuck Berry. If you want to learn about rock & roll, if you want to play rock & roll, you have to start there.
I’ve had the fortune to shake his hand once or twice, but I’ve never really had a chance to tell him any of this. It was always in passing, at an airport or something. The last time was in the Seventies. I was walking through the airport, and someone said, “It’s Chuck Berry over there.” Well, I had to go over and shake his hand. But he was tongue-tied. Then he was gone.
ILLUSTRATION BY ROB DAY
4
The Rolling Stones
By Steven Van Zandt
The Rolling Stones are my life. If it wasn't for them, I would have been a Soprano for real. I first saw the Stones on TV, on The Hollywood Palace in 1964. In '64, the Beatles were perfect: the hair, the harmonies, the suits. They bowed together. Their music was extraordinarily sophisticated. The whole thing was exciting and alien but very distant in its perfection. The Stones were alien and exciting, too. But with the Stones, the message was, "Maybe you can do this." The hair was sloppier. The harmonies were a bit off. And I don't remember them smiling at all. They had the R&B traditionalist's attitude: "We are not in show business. We are not pop music." And the sex in Mick Jagger's voice was adult. This wasn't pop sex — holding hands, playing spin the bottle. This was the real thing. Jagger had that conversational quality that came from R&B singers and bluesmen, that sort of half-singing, not quite holding notes. The acceptance of Jagger's voice on pop radio was a turning point in rock & roll. He broke open the door for everyone else. Suddenly, Eric Burdon and Van Morrison weren't so weird — even Bob Dylan.
It was completely unique: a white performer doing it in a black way. Elvis Presley did it. But the next guy was Jagger. There were no other white boys doing this. White singers stood there and sang, like the Beatles. The thing we associate with black performers goes back to the church — letting the spirit physically move you, letting go of social restraints, any form of embarrassment or humiliation. Not being in control: That's what Mick Jagger was communicating.
In the beginning, it was Brian Jones' band. He named them. He managed them — got the gigs and wrote to the paper when they got bad reviews. The attitude and aggressiveness — they first came from him. And the tradition came from him. He was using the blues pseudonym Elmo Lewis and playing bottleneck guitar. Then, on albums like Aftermath, he was playing all of these other instruments: dulcimer, harpsichord, sitar. He was so inventive and important. If anybody gets left out of the Stones' story, he's the one.
But Keith Richards has been taken for granted too, relegated historically to permanent rhythm guitar. But his solos were great: "Sympathy for the Devil," "It's All Over Now." And there are the riffs: "Satisfaction," of course, and "The Last Time," which the Stones themselves considered the first serious song they wrote. "Honky Tonk Women" is just one chord. Then he started the tunings: the G tuning and the five-string version of the G tuning. There are chord patterns that relate to his tunings — the "Gimme Shelter" effect, let's call it — where you add a suspended note, and it becomes more melodic and rhythmic at the same time. I play rhythm guitar with the E Street Band in Keith's style all the time. Anybody who plays rock & roll guitar does.
Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, more than any other rock & roll rhythm section, to this day, knew how to swing. It's so much a thing of the past now, but in those days rock & roll was something you danced to. You can just picture how much fun it was to be at the Station Hotel in London in 1963: the crowd going crazy, the Stones going crazy, like they were in a South Side Chicago blues club. You can picture it in the music.
There are generations of young people now who only know the Stones iconically. So I'd send them to the first four albums, the American versions: England's Newest Hitmakers, 12×5, Now! and Out of Our Heads. The next lesson is the second great era: Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. They make up the greatest run of albums in history — and all done in three and a half years.
In a lot of ways, the Stones are playing better now than they were in the Sixties. They were quite sloppy in the early days — which I enjoy. Technically, they're better than they've ever been. The trouble is, their power comes from their first 12 albums. There have been a few great songs since '72, but only a handful. If they were making great records and playing live the way they are now, my God, how amazing would that be?
But live, they're still able to communicate that original power. You can learn a lot from the Stones still: Write good songs, stay in shape and dig deep down for that passion every night. You should live so long, a tenth as long, and be as good as Mick Jagger. It's amazing Keith is still alive. There are a few people who have this constitution of invulnerability, although you shouldn't learn that. Let's be honest: Excessive drug use hurts songwriting. The good side is, he's still on the road, rockin', almost 50 years later. You can't hold most bands together for four years, let alone 50.
They show that if you stick to your guns, and don't compromise with what's trendy, you're gonna go a long fucking way.
ILLUSTRATION BY BRALDT BRALDS
3
Elvis Presley
By Bono
Out of Tupelo, Mississippi, out of Memphis, Tennessee, came this green, sharkskin-suited girl chaser, wearing eye shadow — a trucker-dandy white boy who must have risked his hide to act so black and dress so gay. This wasn’t New York or even New Orleans; this was Memphis in the Fifties. This was punk rock. This was revolt. Elvis changed everything — musically, sexually, politically. In Elvis, you had the whole lot; it’s all there in that elastic voice and body. As he changed shape, so did the world: He was a Fifties-style icon who was what the Sixties were capable of, and then suddenly not. In the Seventies, he turned celebrity into a blood sport, but interestingly, the more he fell to Earth, the more godlike he became to his fans. His last performances showcase a voice even bigger than his gut, where you cry real tears as the music messiah sings his tired heart out, turning casino into temple.
In Elvis, you have the blueprint for rock & roll. The highness — the gospel highs. The mud — the Delta mud, the blues. Sexual liberation. Controversy. Changing the way people feel about the world. It’s all there with Elvis.
I was eight years old when I saw the ’68 comeback special — which was probably an advantage. I hadn’t the critical faculties to divide the different Elvises into different categories or sort through the contradictions. Pretty much everything I want from guitar, bass and drums was present: a performer annoyed by the distance from his audience; a persona that made a prism of fame’s wide-angle lens; a sexuality matched only by a thirst for God’s instruction.
But it’s that elastic spastic dance that is the most difficult to explain — hips that swivel from Europe to Africa, which is the whole point of America, I guess. For an Irish boy, the voice might have explained the sexiness of the U.S.A., but the dance explained the energy of this new world about to boil over and scald the rest of us with new ideas on race, religion, fashion, love and peace.
I once met with Coretta Scott King, John Lewis and some of the other leaders of the American civil rights movement, and they reminded me of the cultural apartheid rock & roll was up against. I think the hill they climbed would have been much steeper were it not for the racial inroads black music was making on white pop culture. Elvis was already doing what the civil rights movement was demanding: breaking down barriers. You don’t think of Elvis as political, but that is politics: changing the way people see the world.
In the Eighties, U2 went to Memphis, to Sun Studio — the scene of rock & roll’s big bang. Elvis’ music diviner Cowboy Jack Clement opened the studio so we could cut some tracks within the same four walls where Elvis recorded “Mystery Train.” He found the old valve microphone the King had howled through; the reverb was the same reverb: “Train I ride, 16 coaches long.” It was a small tunnel of a place, but there was a certain clarity to the sound. You can hear it in those Sun records, and they are the ones for me. The King didn’t know he was the King yet. Elvis doesn’t know where the train will take him, and that’s why we want to be passengers.
Jerry Schilling, the only one of the Memphis Mafia not to sell him out, told me that when Elvis was upset and feeling out of kilter, he would leave the big house and go down to his little gym, where there was a piano. With no one else around, his choice would always be gospel. He was happiest when he was singing his way back to spiritual safety. But he didn’t stay long enough. Self-loathing was waiting back up at the house, where Elvis was seen shooting at his TV screens, the Bible open beside him at St. Paul’s great ode to love, Corinthians 13. Elvis clearly didn’t believe God’s grace was amazing enough.
Some commentators say it was the Army, others say it was Hollywood or Las Vegas that broke his spirit. The rock & roll world certainly didn’t like to see their King doing what he was told. I think it was probably much more likely his marriage or his mother — or a finer fracture from earlier on, like losing his twin brother, Jesse, at birth. Maybe it was just the big arse of fame sitting on him.
I think the Vegas period is underrated. I find it the most emotional. By that point Elvis was clearly not in control of his own life, and there is this incredible pathos. The big opera voice of the later years — that’s the one that really hurts me.
Why is it that we want our idols to die on a cross of their own making, and if they don’t, we want our money back? But you know, Elvis ate America before America ate him.
ILLUSTRATION BY DAN BROWN
2
Bob Dylan
By Robbie Robertson
Bob Dylan and I started out from different sides of the tracks. When I first heard him, I was already in a band, playing rock & roll. I didn't know a lot of folk music. I wasn't up to speed on the difference he was making as a songwriter. I remember somebody playing "Oxford Town," from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, for me. I thought, "There's something going on here." His voice seemed interesting to me. But it wasn't until we started playing together that I really understood it. He is a powerful singer and a great musical actor, with many characters in his voice. I could hear the politics in the early songs. It's very exciting to hear somebody singing so powerfully, with something to say. But what struck me was how the street had had such a profound effect on him: coming from Minnesota, setting out on the road and coming into New York. There was a hardness, a toughness, in the way he approached his songs and the characters in them. That was a rebellion, in a certain way, against the purity of folk music. He wasn't pussyfooting around on "Like a Rolling Stone" or "Ballad of a Thin Man." This was the rebel rebelling against the rebellion.
I learned early on with Bob that the people he hung around with were not musicians. They were poets, like Allen Ginsberg. When we were in Europe, there'd be poets coming out of the woodwork. His writing came directly out of a tremendous poetic influence, a license to write in images that weren't in the Tin Pan Alley tradition or typically rock & roll, either. I watched him sing "Desolation Row" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" in those acoustic sets in 1965 and '66. I had never seen anything like it — how much he could deliver with a guitar and a harmonica, and how people would just take the ride, going through these stories and songs with him.
When he and I went to Nashville in 1966, to work on Blonde on Blonde, it was the first time I'd ever seen a songwriter writing songs on a typewriter. We'd go to the studio, and he'd be finishing up the lyrics to some of the songs we were going to do. I could hear this typewriter — click, click, click, ring, really fast. He was typing these things out so fast; there was so much to be said.
And he'd be changing things during a session. He'd have a new idea and try to incorporate that. That was something else he taught me early on. The Hawks were band musicians. We needed to know where the song was going to go, what the chord changes were, where the bridge was. Bob has never been big on rehearsing. He comes from a place where he just did the songs on acoustic guitar by himself. When we'd play the song with him, it would be, "How do we end it?" And he'd say, "Oh, when it's over, it's over. We'll just stop." We got so we were ready for anything — and that was a good feeling. We'd think, "OK, this can take a left turn at any minute — and I'm ready."
More than anything, in my own songwriting, the thing I learned from Bob is that it's OK to break those traditional rules of what songs are supposed to be: the length of a song, how imaginative you could get telling the story. It was great that someone had broken down the gates, opened up the sky to all of the possibilities.
I think Bob has a true passion for the challenge, for coming up with something in the music that makes him feel good, to keep on doing it and doing it, as he does now. The songs Bob is writing now are as good as any songs he's ever written. There's a wonderful honesty in them. He writes about what he sees and feels, about who he is. We spent a lot of time together in the 1970s. We were both living in Malibu and knew what was going on in our respective day-to-day lives. And I know Blood on the Tracks is a reflection of what was happening to him then. When he writes songs, he's holding up a mirror — and I'm seeing it all clearly, like I've never seen it before.
I don't think Bob ever wanted to be more than a good songwriter. When people are like, "Oh, my God, you're having an effect on culture and society" — I doubt he thinks like that. I don't think Hank Williams understood why his songs were so much more moving than other people's songs. I think Bob is thinking, "I hope I can think of another really good song." He's putting one foot in front of the other and just following his bliss.
But Bob is a great barometer for young singers and songwriters. As soon as they think they've written something good — "I'm pushing the envelope here, I've made a breakthrough" — they should listen to one of his songs. He will always stand as the one to measure good work by. That's one of the greatest accomplishments of all.
ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL DAVIS
1
The Beatles
By Elvis Costello
I first heard of the Beatles when I was nine years old. I spent most of my holidays on Merseyside then, and a local girl gave me a bad publicity shot of them with their names scrawled on the back. This was 1962 or '63, before they came to America. The photo was badly lit, and they didn't quite have their look down; Ringo had his hair slightly swept back, as if he wasn't quite sold on the Beatles haircut yet. I didn't care; they were the band for me. The funny thing is that parents and all their friends from Liverpool were also curious and proud about this local group. Prior to that, the people in show business from the north of England had all been comedians. Come to think of it, the Beatles recorded for Parlophone, which was known as a comedy label.
I was exactly the right age to be hit by them full on. My experience — seizing on every picture, saving money for singles and EPs, catching them on a local news show — was repeated over and over again around the world. It was the first time anything like this had happened on this scale. But it wasn't just about the numbers.
Every record was a shock when it came out. Compared to rabid R&B evangelists like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles arrived sounding like nothing else. They had already absorbed Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry, but they were also writing their own songs. They made writing your own material expected, rather than exceptional.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney were exceptional songwriters; McCartney was, and is, a truly virtuoso musician; George Harrison wasn't the kind of guitar player who tore off wild, unpredictable solos, but you can sing the melodies of nearly all of his breaks. Most important, they always fit right into the arrangement. Ringo Starr played the drums with an incredibly unique feel that nobody can really copy, although many fine drummers have tried and failed. Most of all, John and Paul were fantastic singers.
Lennon, McCartney and Harrison had stunningly high standards as writers. Imagine releasing a song like "Ask Me Why" or "Things We Said Today" as a B side. These records were events, and not just advance notice of an album release.
Then they started to really grow up. They went from simple love lyrics to adult stories like "Norwegian Wood," which spoke of the sour side of love, and on to bigger ideas than you would expect to find in catchy pop lyrics.
They were pretty much the first group to mess with the aural perspective of their recordings and have it be more than just a gimmick. Before the Beatles, you had guys in lab coats doing recording experiments in the Fifties, but you didn't have rockers deliberately putting things out of balance, like a quiet vocal in front of a loud track on "Strawberry Fields Forever." You can't exaggerate the license that this gave to everyone from Motown to Jimi Hendrix.
My absolute favorite albums are Rubber Soul and Revolver. When you picked up Revolver, you knew it was something different. Heck, they are wearing sunglasses indoors in the picture on the back of the cover and not even looking at the camera … and the music was so strange and yet so vivid. If I had to pick a favorite song from those albums, it would be "And Your Bird Can Sing" … no, "Girl" … no, "For No One" … and so on, and so on….
Their breakup album, Let It Be, contains songs both gorgeous and jagged. I remember going to Leicester Square and seeing the film of Let It Be in 1970. I left with a melancholy feeling.
The word "Beatlesque" has been in the dictionary for a while now. I can hear them in the Prince album Around the World in a Day; in Ron Sexsmith's tunes; in Harry Nilsson's melodies. You can hear that Kurt Cobain listened to the Beatles and mixed them in with punk and metal.
I've co-written some songs with Paul McCartney and performed with him in concert on a few occasions. During one rehearsal, I was singing harmony on a Ricky Nelson song, and Paul called out the next tune: "All My Loving." I said, "Do you want me to take the harmony line the second time round?" And he said, "Yeah, give it a try." I'd only had 35 years to learn the part. It was a very poignant performance, witnessed only by the crew and other artists on the bill.
At the show, it was very different. The second he sang the opening lines — "Close your eyes, and I'll kiss you" — the crowd's reaction was so intense that it all but drowned the song out. It was very thrilling but also rather disconcerting. Perhaps I understood in that moment one of the reasons why the Beatles had to stop performing. The songs weren't theirs anymore. They were everybody's.
IN THIS ARTICLE:
AC/DC,
Al Green,
Beach Boys,
Beastie Boys,
Beatles,
Black Sabbath,
Bo Diddley,
Bob Dylan,
Bono,
Booker T & The MGs,
Bruce Springsteen,
Carl Perkins,
Chuck Berry,
Creedence Clearwater Revival,
Curtis Mayfield,
David Bowie,
Diana Ross,
Diana Ross and the Supremes,
Eagles,
Elton John,
Elvis Costello,
Elvis Presley,
Eminem,
Fats Domino,
Gram Parsons,
Guns N' Roses,
Hip-Hop,
Iggy Pop,
James Taylor,
Jay-Z,
Jim Morrison,
Jimi Hendrix,
John Lennon,
Johnny Cash,
Joni Mitchell,
Kurt Cobain,
Led Zeppelin,
Little Richard,
Lynyrd Skynyrd,
Madonna,
Marvin Gaye,
Metallica,
Michael Jackson,
Muddy Waters,
Neil Young,
Nine Inch Nails,
Nirvana,
Patti Smith,
Paul Simon,
Phil Spector,
Pink Floyd,
Public Enemy,
Queen,
R.E.M.,
Radiohead,
Sam Cooke,
Simon & Garfunkel,
Stevie Wonder,
Sting,
Talking Heads,
The Doors,
The Four Tops,
The Police,
The Rolling Stones,
The Stooges,
The Yardbirds,
Tina Turner,
Tom Petty,
Trent Reznor,
Tupac Shakur,
U2
MUSIC