“You guys make me feel so incredible,” Taylor Swift often told the crowds of fans who filled the stadium at each stop on her Eras tour.

Joining in the applause, the 33-year-old pop star then kissed her biceps, all the while making the audience even more enthusiastic. “You guys are making me feel so strong,” she said, with a smile on her face.

It’s just a stage performance, but Swiftie Nation (Taylor Swift’s fan community) understands that she’s always been her true source of strength – and in her 17-year career, this female singer has never now has much more economic, cultural and political influence.

All of that has helped her move up the rankings on Forbes magazine’s list of the World’s Most Powerful Women, from position 79 in 2022 to position 5 this year.

Thanks to the record success of her Eras tour, Swift became a self-made billionaire in October – making her the rare recording artist to achieve billionaire status, along with Jay-Z (net worth net: 2.5 billion USD) and Rihanna (1.4 billion USD).

A three-and-a-half-hour concert retrospective of her career, the Eras tour grossed nearly $850 million over the course of 66 shows in the United States.

The first leg helped Swift earn an additional $190 million after taxes, bringing the singer’s net worth to $1.1 billion. The show will be held in locations in Europe and Asia next year.

The so-called Taylor Swift Effect creates widespread financial impact. Two nights of her tour in Denver added $140 million to Colorado’s gross domestic product, thanks to fans spending an average of $1,300 each on hotels, restaurants and retail.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve even said May – during which the singer performed three nights in the state – marked the city’s highest month for hotel revenue since before the pandemic. The American Travel Association estimates that the total tour around the United States has added more than $5 billion to the state’s economy.

“Basically, Taylor Swift is like a large corporation, operating in many sectors,” said University of Chicago economist Carolyn Sloane. “Her audience has tended to be so young and so feminine for so long that people may have underestimated how much of an impact they have economically. I don’t think anyone doubts that today.”

Female audiences, mostly young, also followed Swift to the movie box office this year. Here, she once again demonstrated her clout, bypassing Hollywood studios to release The Eras Tour directly with AMC in October, despite the fact that she had no traditional marketing machine. through the back.

Swift itself is the ultimate marketing machine. The film grossed $93 million in its opening weekend and grossed more than $250 million worldwide.

Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” broke new ground, becoming the first tour in history to surpass the $1 billion mark in ticket sales in just 60 days.

As with the Eras tour and the concert film, much of Swift’s power stems from her direct control of her business.

More impressive, and potentially more lucrative, is how she regained ownership of her song catalog by re-recording the albums that were part of the $300 million sale that Swift alleges was done behind her back. .

To date, she has re-recorded and released four out of six albums. The most recent of these, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), set a record on Spotify for most streamed by an artist in a single day.

When you consider that Katy Perry and Justin Bieber sold the rights to their respective music catalogs in 2023 for over $200 million, Swift’s musical value will only make her richer in this era. upcoming.

However, Swift is still not the most powerful woman in the world. That position belongs to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose policy and budget decisions affect 450 million Europeans. That number could soon exceed 500 million.

Second place this year is Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, who is shaping Europe’s monetary policy in a time of high inflation.

Ranked ahead of Swift are US Vice President Kamala Harris (No. 3) and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (No. 4). Both are the first women to hold their respective positions, and Meloni is asserting her influence by proposing to reform the Italian constitution to allow direct election of the prime minister.

“All hard power people are really strong women, but they won’t be able to change the world the way Taylor Swift does,” said Jones, a branding expert.