A Very Important Post About... Taylor Swift's Prestige Power.

Forget hosting the Olympics -- it's hosting a T-Swift concert that matters!

Photo by Raphael Lovaski on Unsplash

I’m the kind of middle-aged white guy who is not afraid to say that I like some Taylor Swift songs: “Wildest Dreams,” “Cardigan,” “Love Story,” “Anti-Hero,” Style.” In the immortal words of Terry Jeffords, “she makes all of us feel things!”

It was only this past year that I began to comprehend the true power of Taylor Swift. First there was the whole Ticketmaster drama involving her Eras tour. Then it was what happened to local traffic when T-Swift performed at Gillette Stadium. I live well north of Foxboro, and I-95 was nonetheless clogged all three days she performed there. This country/pop singer has some serious fans.

It looks like the Eras tour is a smash hit in the United States. In the spirit of Dumb IR Summer, however, let’s talk about T-Swift’s global power. Earlier this month she announced she’d be adding some extra 2024 European shows to the Eras tour with Paramore opening for her.¹ The locations include Paris, Stockholm, Hamburg, Dublin, Warsaw, and London.

As Semafor’s J.D. Capelouto explains, however, this has caused more than one world leader to publicly plead with Swift to add their country to the tour list:

What makes a country relevant on the world stage? Its geopolitical standing? GDP? Military prowess?

Right now, it feels like the No. 1 sign of global clout is whether Taylor Swift is coming to town.

Since Swift announced the international legs of her acclaimed Eras Tour, a slew of national leaders, spanning at least four continents, have pleaded with the pop star to add a stop in their country or city, in a bid to get a taste of the tour’s economic and cultural impact….

There are reasons beyond the money that getting an Eras Tour date feels like a win for a city or country. Over 15 years into her career, Swift’s popularity and influence is reaching a new peak, and the tour has become such a cultural juggernaut that simply hosting a show gives a city bragging rights and its own news cycle.

Local news outlets celebrate when it’s ”Taylor Swift week" in their city. Politicians have temporarily renamed their city, given Swift official declarations, and, in New Jersey’s case, introduced a new state sandwich in her honor.

Swift is a relatively non-divisive and universally beloved celeb, making it easy for politicians to celebrate her and simultaneously impress her army of fans. Even pleading with Swift to visit generates headlines.

The examples from the many continents are wild. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau tweeted at Swift: “It’s me, hi. I know places in Canada would love to have you. So, don’t make it another cruel summer. We hope to see you soon.” Leaders from Thailand and Chile also begged Swift to add tour dates in their country. Citizens in ASEAN countries are bemoaning that in their region, the Eras tour is only playing in Singapore. Indonesians and Malaysians blame “red tape and political conservatism as factors that put off international performers.”

Great powers and aspiring great powers have often competed in areas viewed to enhance their prestige: the space race, the vaccine race, hosting an Olympics or a World Cup, and so forth. Hosting a Taylor Swift concert seems like just another form of prestige competition.

Is it a productive form of competition? Racing to develop a vaccine yields massive spillovers for society. Space exploration generated some spillovers. Hosting an Olympics produces little but stories about corruption. What about hosting a Taylor Swift concert?

This seems like a promising prestige competition, to be honest. Hosting such a concert is mostly a local win-win; beyond Taylor Swift and her roadies, the primary beneficiaries of any T-Swift concert are the sated T-Swift fans and the busy local entrepreneurs profiting from the significant bump in business activity.

There is also the soft power benefit of signaling to other countries that Taylor Swift is cool with performing there. Who knows, maybe by the time the Eras tour is over Tom Friedman will discard his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention and replace it with a “Bad Blood Theory of Never Getting Back Into a Fight Ever” hypothesis.

So as much as I want to poke fun at world leaders begging Taylor Swift to perform in their countries, this seems like a healthier form of pop culture competition than, say, paying a pop star millions to open up a new hotel in Dubai.

1. I like several Paramore songs as well. So sometimes I have the musical tastes of a young woman: so sue me.