The Reign of Taylor Swift! The Pop Superstar Tops PEOPLE’s 2023 Most Intriguing People of the Year List

The global phenomenon electrified stadiums and ruled the charts. After her biggest year yet, friends say she’s still “just getting started”

Jeff Nelson is the Senior Music Editor at PEOPLE. He has been with the brand since 2014, editing, writing and reporting across entertainment verticals.

PEOPLE’s 2023 Most Intriguing People of the Year cover, featuring Taylor Swift. PHOTO: PEGGY SIROTA/TRUNK ARCHIVE

Taylor Swift is on top of the world and more in control than ever as she closes out her biggest year yet — which is why she’s on the cover of PEOPLE’s 2023 Most Intriguing People of the Year issue.

Her record-shattering Eras Tour (a 3.5-hour spectacle that draws from her 10 albums and spawned a history-making concert film) helped boost Swift to billionaire status, Forbes reported in October. Rerecordings of her early albums (which she began to release after her original label head sold them to music manager Scooter Braun) have even made vinyl records popular with Gen Z: 1989 (Taylor’s Version) broke the record for the largest vinyl sales week ever in October with at least 580,000 copies sold.

And the 12-time Grammy winner remains a force in pop culture, defining friendship goals with her tightknit group of girlfriends and causing Taylor-mania in the NFL amid her new romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

Taylor Swift.PEGGY SIROTA / TRUNK ARCHIVE

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After 17 years living in the spotlight, “she knows when, where, how to promote [her work], but she also knows when, where, how to be normal and be a human just living her life,” Tim McGraw says of Swift, 33. “I think she has brilliantly navigated that line.”

Raised on a Christmas tree farm near Wyomissing, Penn., by her parents Scott, then a stock broker, and Andrea, a former marketing executive, Swift relocated with her family at 14 to the Nashville area to chase her music dreams.

“She never really stops writing songs,” says the National frontman Aaron Dessner, 47, who first began working with the star on her 2020 pandemic projects Folklore and Evermore. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her, and I’ve never seen anyone wait on her. When I have stayed at her house, Taylor herself was cooking everyone breakfast and dinner. She’s legitimately just a very down to earth and hard-working person.”

A fan’s friendship bracelets on opening night of Taylor Swift’s concert film.AMANDA EDWARDS/GETTY

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For nearly two decades, Swift has reinvented herself at a Madonna-like pace, bending genres and redefining the music business with her marketing savvy.

“We do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35. The female artists that I know of have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to. Or else you’re out of a job,” she said in her 2020 documentary Miss Americana. “This is probably one of my last opportunities as an artist to grasp onto that kind of success. So as I’m reaching 30, I’m like, I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful.”

Taylor Swift.PEGGY SIROTA / TRUNK ARCHIVE

In the last three years, Swift has taken a hammer to that glass ceiling, shattering expectations — and blazing a path for the next generation of female artists.

“Since I was a little girl, I’ve really looked up to how fearless and how smart she is. As a performer, I look up to how she’s able to connect with every single person in the crowd, like she’s singing to them personally,” says her Eras Tour opener Sabrina Carpenter, 24. “She sets such a beautiful tone, and it’s why the shows are as magical as they are. And offstage she is still a superstar, but she’s a superstar who’s really good at baking.”

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While she’s accomplished more in a year than anyone in the game, Swift may be even busier in 2024. Touring through next December, she has two more albums to re-release and has frequently been spotted at an N.Y.C. recording studio with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff; she’s up for six more Grammys in February; and her feature film directorial debut based on an original script she’s written is still in the works.

Taylor Swift performing with Este, Danielle and Alana Haim on July 28 at Levi’s Stadium.JEFF KRAVITZ/TAS23/GETTY

“Taylor has so many stories to tell,” says Dessner. “I think she’ll keep inventing new ways and methods of writing and keep expanding this enchanted universe of her own making that we all get to enjoy.”

Swift’s longtime friend, Paramore rocker Hayley Williams, 34, agrees.

“I’m almost afraid to say it,” Williams ponders, “but I kind of think she’s just getting started.”