13 Moments From Taylor Swift's Career That Prove She's Truly the Artist of the Decade

In 2010, Taylor stepped into the spotlight in a big way as she broke records with her music. Taylor's second album Fearless was named album of the year at the Grammys. Not only was it her first win in the category, but at 20 years old she also became the youngest solo artist to ever receive the award.

As Taylor became more well-known for her music, people also gained interest in her celebrity romances. After collaborating on the song "Half of My Heart," Taylor was romantically linked to John Mayer. The relationship lasted a few months, and Taylor eventually entitled the breakup song "Dear John" about him. Later that year, Taylor had a brief romance with actor Jake Gyllenhaal. The two only dated for a few months, but their romance inspired most of Taylor's Red album.

After writing her third album, Speak Now, entirely by herself in 2010, Taylor embarked on her Speak Now World Tour in February 2011. The tour made stops in Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania, and included guest appearances from artists like Selena Gomez, Nicki Minaj, and Justin Bieber. Earning $104.2 million worldwide, the show was the highest-grossing female tour of 2011.

After receiving critical acclaim for her Speak Now album, Taylor started a brand new era with the release of fourth album, Red, in October 2012. Though the album was still under the country genre, it definitely showed Taylor's transition to mainstream pop with hits like "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and "I Knew You Were Trouble." As the title suggests, the album features some of Taylor's most emotional lyrics to date including her fan-favorite song, "All Too Well."

During a livestream in August 2014, Taylor officially announced that she was going pop with her new album 1989. The album, which was named after her birth year, quickly became a huge success with multiple hit singles like "Shake It Off," "Blank Space," and "Bad Blood." The album was inspired by several big moments in Taylor's life at the time, including her move to NYC and her publicized romance with Harry Styles.

Of course, Taylor and Kanye's friendship was short-lived when he released "Famous" in February 2016. The song caused mixed reactions, specifically for the lyric, "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / I made that b*tch famous." Taylor responded to the song when she took home album of the year for 1989 at the Grammys nearly a week later.

"I want to say to all the young women out there there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success, or take credit for your accomplishments, or your fame," she said during her speech. "But if you just focus on the work, and you don't let those people sidetrack you, someday, when you get where you're going, you'll look around and you'll know that it was you, and the people who love you, who put you there."

Following a long and complicated game of "he said, she said" from Taylor, Kanye, and Kim, the singer eventually stepped out of the spotlight when the hashtag "Taylor Swift Is Canceled" started trending on social media in Summer 2016.

In June 2016, Taylor ended her year-long relationship with Scottish DJ Calvin Harris. Though their split seemed to be amicable at first, Taylor quickly moved on with British actor Tom Hiddleston two weeks after breaking things off with Calvin. The DJ eventually opened up about the breakup in since-deleted Twitter rant about the singer and their collaboration on the song "This Is What You Came For."

After a whirlwind romance with Tom, with stops in Italy, Tennessee, Rhode Island, New York City, Australia, and England, Taylor eventually ended things with the actor in September 2017, because he reportedly wanted the romance to be more public. She quietly began dating British actor Joe Alwyn sometime later that year.

In August 2017, Taylor made headlines for her sexual assault trial against an ex-DJ David Mueller, who she accused of groping her during a Denver meet-and-greet back in 2013. The singer eventually won the civil case and ordered David to pay her a symbolic amount of $1. Following her trial, Taylor kept her promise to donate to sexual assault victims when she gave an undisclosed but "generous" amount of money to fellow sexual activist and close friend Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation.

That same month, Taylor made her grand return to music with the announcement of her sixth album, Reputation. The album showed a much darker side of Taylor's music with songs about revenge and her infamous feuds and lots of snake imagery as she took back the narrative for being called a snake by Kim. During the time of the album's release, Taylor made sure to let her music do the talking as she refrained from doing interviews and made a handful of public appearances. She even proclaimed "the old Taylor was dead" in the lyrics for her lead single, "Look What You Made Me Do."

As Taylor "shed" her reputation in 2017, she slowly began to rebuild it the following year. In 2018, Taylor came back swinging as she embarked on her show-stopping Reputation stadium tour, broke her political silence, made history at the AMAs as the show's most decorated female artist, and left Big Machine Records after almost 13 years.

At the end of 2018, Taylor revealed that her new musical home would be Republic Records and Universal Music Group. The new deal gave Taylor ownership of any future masters as well as ensured that any sale of the label's shares in Spotify "will result in a distribution of money to their artists."

In 2019, Taylor also raked in some big achievements. She was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people, she became the very first recipient of the Icon Award at the Teen Choice Awards, Billboard named her the first-ever woman of the decade, and she took home the artist of the decade award at the American Music Awards. During the AMAs, Taylor also became the show's most awarded artist of all time with 28 wins. Michael Jackson previously held the record with 24 wins.

Looking back at Taylor's transition from rising country singer to one of the biggest pop stars in the world, we would say the title of artist of the decade is definitely well-deserved.