or a long time, it seemed that the crown of the best of the best bestowed on Taylor Swift was a bit too much. She was singing about her very public relationships with public personalities and getting into controversies featuring Kanye West and former Mrs. West, Kim Kardashian. A country star who became a pop star also made one skeptical about the hype.

But if you’ve been paying attention, the term ‘Taylor’s Versions’ often appeared on random sites this year.

Was it because of the record labels she worked with or was working with? Nope.

The power record labels held over artists such as Taylor Swift, did not have any part in this massive tour, that garnered her more fans as well as an autonomy over her career.

To dismiss the notion that she is one of the biggest entertainers in the world with a massive fan following would be wrong. She might not be your cup of tea or mine, but she does appeal to a huge audience in America and around the world.

“Her epic career-retrospective tour recounting her artistic ‘eras,’ which played 66 dates across the Americas this year, is projected to become the biggest of all time and the first to gross over a billion dollars,” notes Time. And that’s just the start.

She has had an impact on a vulnerable economy and ‘Taylor’ effect was being talked about like a political analyst would discuss the cultural shift post-Obama. “Cities, stadiums, and streets were renamed for her. Every time she came to a new place, a mini economic boom took place as hotels and restaurants saw a surge of visitors. In releasing her concert movie, Swift bypassed studios and streamers, instead forging an unusual pact with AMC, giving the theater chain its highest single-day ticket sales in history. There are at least 10 college classes devoted to her, including one at Harvard; the professor, Stephanie Burt, tells TIME she plans to compare Swift’s work to that of the poet William Wordsworth.

Friendship bracelets traded by her fans at concerts became a hot accessory, with one line in a song causing as much as a 500% increase in sales at craft stores. When Swift started dating Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chief and two-time Super Bowl champion, his games saw a massive increase in viewership. (Yes, she somehow made one of America’s most popular things—football—even more popular.) And then there’s her critically hailed songbook—a catalog so beloved that as she rereleases it, she’s often breaking chart records she herself set. She’s the last monoculture left in our stratified world.”

Carrying an economy on your back is a lot for one person. “I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there,” she says about her routine during and after playing shows. “It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels.

“I realized every record label was actively working to try to replace me,” she says. “I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.”

Adapting to changing times and how music is consumed, Swift began writing her songs without any songwriter in the room, earning the respect of women like Phoebe Bridgers and Greta Gerwig.

The biggest move she made was figuring out how to deal with record labels, publishing, licensing and how to get her records back so the profit didn’t go to people who, in a way, controlled her future by owning records that she would go on to release.

“Since Swift wrote her own songs, she retained the musical composition copyright and could rerecord them. She also negotiated to own the master rights for her material when she moved over to Republic in 2018, so she now owns her new material and the rerecorded songs.”

Since Swift made this move, major labels have, not surprisingly, made it “more difficult for artists to rerecord their music”.

In Swift’s case, she rerecorded the songs while keeping her audience in mind. There were subtle differences. Older material became Taylor’s Version. She also added “unreleased tracks to redirect listenership to them. She frames the strategy as a coping mechanism. It’s all in how you deal with loss. I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

( – With information from Time Magazine)