In 2006, singer and songwriter Taylor Swift released her first self-titled debut album “Taylor Swift,” and has been making music ever since. Since then, she has branched out into several genres, making music that reaches many platforms and ages. She has been loyal to her fans since the beginning, and the world has watched her grow up from a teenager into a remarkable young woman. Now 30 years old, Swift won Artist of The Decade at the American Music Awards in 2019.

Throughout the decade, Swift did not just simply create music that resonated with the popular crowds. Instead, she strategically decided what she should not take part in within the music industry, and what was worth her time and talent. Over the course of her career, Swift has had issues with people not respecting her authority over her own music, and has been criticized by the public audience as a result. She has had bumps along the road, and people who have tried to tear her down. Instead of taking it to heart, she always bounces back with an appropriate response.

Aside from the American Music Awards, she was also named Billboard’s Woman of the Decade. In her speech, she honed in on topics that she has not talked about before, and she explained how her career has changed her as a person in a positive light. She explained how being in the public eye has affected her life and her music. She touched on how men have tried to criticize her presence, take advantage of her, and take credit for her hard work in the music industry. 

In her speech on Billboards website she stated, “I saw that as a female in this industry, some people will always have slight reservations about you. Whether you deserve to be there, whether your male producer or co-writer is the reason for your success, or whether it was a savvy record label. It wasn’t.”

In explanation to how much she has grown, she goes further into detail as to how she responds in her Billboard speech to the public’s view on her as an artist. 

“I saw that people love to explain away a woman’s success in the music industry, and I saw something in me change due to this realization. This was the decade when I became a mirror for my detractors. Whatever they decided I couldn’t do is exactly what I did….Whatever they criticized about me became material for musical satires or inspirational anthems, and the best lyrical examples I can think of are songs like ‘Mean,’ ‘Shake It Off,’ and ‘Blank Space.’ Basically if people had something to say about me, I usually said something back in my own way.”

Taylor Swift has an incredibly large audience and has accomplished many things in her life. She is a role model to young girls growing up in the twenty-first century, and she influenced music greatly during the past decade.