Taylor swift vs The Beatles: as Eras tour hit How does a star compare against the biggest band of all time? the UK…

Are you ready for it? Because this week, Taylor Swift rolls into town for the first UK dates of her record-shattering Eras tour, to dominate front pages, social media, and a large proportion of the national conversation for the foreseeable.

Something has shifted in the Swiftverse in the past few years. She now transcends even the highest echelons of pop fame, massively boosting everything from music sales to, well, the entire global economy.

The Eras tour is a cultural and economic juggernaut; the first to cross the $1bn mark, according to Pollstar’s 2023 year-end charts, and already beating the record set by Sir Elton John and his Farewell Yellow Brick Road goodbye, which ran from 2018 to 2023 and grossed $939 million. Several experts predict it could generate more than $4bn by the time it finishes.

Swift is the first arts and entertainment star to be named Time’s Person of the Year. The first ever music billionaire to reach the milestone solely through her songwriting and recording. A slick pop star who understands the power of This. Sick. Beat, but also a songwriter and lyricist whose words are studied as poetry around the world. She has long been the biggest modern music star on the planet – but could she now be the biggest of all time?

In October last year, Swift re-released her fifth album, 1989, the record that really marked her crossover from incredibly successful country star to pop phenomenon. Featuring re-records of tracks that remain among her biggest hits to date, including Shake It Off, Blank Space and Bad Blood, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) inevitably followed all her others in skipping to the top of charts around the world.

Three weeks later came reissues of The Beatles’ classic Red and Blue album collections following the surprise release of Now And Then, the first original single in years, finally finished by Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Ringo Starr after more than four decades.

Now And Then topped the singles chart, naturally. But when it came to taking on Swift on the album chart, the star held her spot – denying the biggest and most influential band in history an extension to their record-breaking UK number one tally. Of course, The Beatles albums were reissues, but it’s worth noting Swift’s re-recordings are also not entirely new – she is re-recording much of her early work to reclaim her rights, with the addition of “from the vault” tracks – plus, fans had already been buying 1989 (Taylor’s Version) for three weeks by this point.

To Swifties, she is undoubtedly the biggest music artist of all time. To fans of the Fab Four, there will never be another act that comes close. Can their achievements be compared?

It’s tricky. Swift and The Beatles reached the height of their fame (and Swift might not even be there yet) in different – ahem – eras. There are multiple caveats – inflation, population growth, streaming and the affordability of music, live music becoming more lucrative, social media, do we include the individual Beatles’ solo output (we haven’t), and so on – that mean there is no exact science here.

But, we’ve given it a go.

Dr Clio Doyle, a lecturer in early modern literature at Queen Mary University of London, teaches a module on Swift’s lyrics as literature. In her field, she says she would draw comparisons with artists such as Bob Dylan rather than The Beatles.

“It’s this kind of body of work that is really self-examining and self-revising and revisiting in a way that feels very dynamic and alive and intellectually interesting,” she says of Swift’s music. “I also think that one thing Swift has always done throughout her career is, she’s often talking about literature – from a very early song like Love Story, which is rewriting Romeo And Juliet, to a later song like The Lakes, which is thinking about romantic poetry

Dylan became the first musician to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016, she points out, a decision deemed controversial due to arguments over whether lyrics count as literature. “I think we have to say they do because they’re written texts,” says Dr Doyle. “I think those are very interesting conversations. And I think we see some of those conversations also now around Taylor Swift.”

And Dr Amy Skjerseth, a lecturer in audiovisual media and a member of the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool, says that like Swift, The Beatles also had different eras, but Swift’s experience in the industry will have been different to theirs, as four male star

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