I had a friend tell me “Kanye West made Taylor Swift famous” yesterday, and I had to correct him.
I explained to my friend: “In your music world of predominately hip hop, you personally have never heard of Taylor Swift, but she was huge before Kanye ever walked on stage to “let her finish.” You’re basing your opinion on some derogatory lyrics toward Taylor Swift in one of Kanye’s newer songs, and we can’t really take Kanye seriously; 90% of what comes out of his mouth is garbage.”
Taylor Swift originally came into the music scene through country music, and since then has become a “pop artist.” Her popularity and growth are more a result of her musical progression, songwriting skills, and longevity than one dude walking on stage and getting her some news headlines. She was already receiving new headlines, just not any my friend was seeing.
He didn’t really give much a rebuttal when I finished speaking. I could tell he was thinking about it because usually he’ll return with counter points, which makes debating with him enjoyable as well as often frustrating.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it and even though I felt I did a good job of arguing my side of things, I wanted further proof, a mountain of evidence. So I looked at both of their Facebook likes to see where they stand in that regard: Kanye West has 9.5 million likes (although a “community page” since he doesn’t seem to have an official page) and Taylor Swift has 74.2 million likes.
And if that community page thing doesn’t satisfy you, we can look at a social media Kanye loves to use – Twitter. On Twitter, Kanye West has 19.1 million followers, Taylor Swift has 71.4 million followers.
Social numbers aren’t everything, but those are some very considerable gap. And generally, if a small artist gets some light shined on them by a bigger artist (if that were the case here), they don’t typically outgrow the bigger artist, but rather gain a portion of the bigger artists’ fan base. So for the sake of argument, let’s say Kanye converted every single of his Twitter followers to Taylor Swift fans. How would you account for the 52 million remaining followers Taylor Swift has?
Again, that’s all social numbers, which can be bought – a good indication of an artist’s fame, but not an absolute. So let’s take a peek at album sales, before & after Kanye made Taylor Swift famous…
The “let you finish” incident happened in September 2009, and by that time Taylor Swift had released two studio albums and Kanye West had released three studio albums. Here’s how the numbers stack up for both artists studio albums:
Kanye West Studio Albums
Taylor Swift Studio Albums
Pretty much, no matter where you look the numbers generally point to Taylor Swift wearing the crown.
TLDR: Taylor Swift > Kanye West
