SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – NOVEMBER 24: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO STANDALONE PUBLICATION USE (NO SPECIAL … More INTEREST OR SINGLE ARTIST PUBLICATION USE; NO BOOK USE)) A young fan exchanges friendship bracelets with Taylor Swift as she performs onstage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Allianz Parque on November 24, 2023 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (Photo by TAS2023 via Getty Images) Getty Images Taylor Swift is one of those rare megastars.

But how did she become so successful? A new book by Kevin Evers, There’s nothing like this: The strategic genius of Taylor Swift, explores Swift’s rise to fame and fortune through the lens of business, also highlighting many of her unusual characteristics, support structures and willingness to win that likely shows why she is where she is. Talent, Support And A Variety Of Important Qualities For Success Record executive Scott Borchetta said of her when she performed as a teenager at the Blue Bird Café: “I was just blown away by her songs.

And she could hang, you know? She had no problem hanging with these seasoned songwriters. She’s so competitive, and in that moment, she wasn’t going to let anybody upstage her.” Nashville songwriter Robert Ellis Orrall noted, “When she was [13] one out of ten [songs] were amazing and the other ones, not so much.

Then, not two years later, nine out of ten were amazing. She had it in her.” During the Covid-19 lockdown, she rethought her entire musical approach: “Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, ‘What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell?

What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?’” As Evers explains, yes, she had wealthy and supportive parents, and yet: “[A] lot of people have talent, and supportive parents, and the benefits of a secure upbringing. None of them does what Taylor Swift has done because few display the broad collection of qualities that Swift has, ones Orrall noticed that hinted at her extraordinary potential.

Her skills, spunk, confidence, and determination—attributes that align pretty closely with what scientific research says are the markers of high potential: ability, intelligence, and drive.” The role of early talent identification and talent development for eventual expertise and extraordinary achievement is well studied and established across multiple domains. Drive, Perseverance And The Willingness To Work And Reinvent Herself Evers writes: “Her drive was evident in the fact that a thirteen-year-old was coming to the studio with fifteen or twenty songs, a drive that contributed to her exceptional songwriting ability and rapid advancement, which underscored her potential.” She persevered despite setbacks. Early on, when she was awarded Best Video by a Female Artist at the 2009 MTC Video Music Awards, Kanye West suddenly took the stage saying that Beyonce should have won.

Swift explained what that communicated to her at the time: “As a teenager who had only been in country music, attending my very first pop awards show, somebody stood up and sent me a message: ‘You are not respected here. You shouldn’t be here on this stage.’ That message was received, and it burrowed into my psyche more than anyone knew.” As she spoke to fans at Wembley Stadium in 2024: “Every time someone talks shit, it just makes me work even harder and it makes me that much tougher.” She was devoted to her fans. As Evers explains about her choice to lean into the Eras tour: “Swift has never been a moderate when it comes to her fans.

So perhaps it was fitting that, to celebrate her long career, she chose to lean into the mindset that drove her to meet five hundred thousand people when she was sixteen years old.” Even when she was already a superstar, she still knew she had to continue innovating: “I felt like I was walking along the sidewalk, knowing eventually the pavement was going to crumble and I was gonna fall through,” she noted. “You can’t keep winning and have people like it. People love ‘new’ too much.” She Is True To Herself And To Her Fans Pleasant Rowland, creator of the American Girl brand, saw how Swift understood her customers: “Swift’s strategies and songwriting reflect her nuanced understanding of the job her fans, particularly girls and young women, hire her to do: help articulate their feelings and validate who they are—their identity and their sense of self—and, by doing so, make them feel as if they’ve forged deep, personal, and intimate relationships.” Evers explained: “Because Swift wrote her own songs, she was likely more emotionally connected to the words she was singing.

They were hers, not someone else’s, and her performance is richer as a result. Listeners can sense it.”