The reports are in, and it looks like Taylor Swift is at the top of Vanity Fair’s “Powers That Be” list, beating Hillary Clinton to the punch. This list is comprised of the most influential artists and executives that have an effect on modern culture.
We’re used to seeing Taylor Swift at the top of lists when it comes to music, particularly after she made it into the 2016 Guinness World Record Book and when she completely dominated the 2015 MTV Music Awards, but this is the first time we’ve seen her on such a powerful list, and to have her in the Number 1 spot is simply incredible.
She beat out a number of her influential peers, including Jay Z & Beyonce, Kanye West & Kim Kardashian, Bradley Cooper, and even LeBron James. In fact, she’s apparently so influential that she beat out democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who currently occupies the number nine spot. Other influential people on the list include Bob Iger, of the Walt Disney Company, J.J. Abrams, the director of the Star Trek films, and of the upcoming film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Megyn Kelly from Fox News .
According to Vanity Fair , the 25-year-old singer and songwriter has been doing her part to help change the world.
“Swift isn’t merely the world’s favorite pop star, putting up sales numbers that are nearly unfathomable in the post-Napster age—she is also using her platform to make giant companies conform to her will. After pulling her catalogue off Spotify last year, Swift wrote an open letter to Apple asking it to pay artists during the free-trial period of its new music service. She posted the note on Tumblr on a Sunday and the company complied within hours.”
The list also states that Taylor’s magic number is 6 billion, since that’s the number of views she currently has on her YouTube page.
Vanity Fair’s “Powers That Be” list was accompanied by another list called The Disrupters. It features a list of the 50 people who have changed the world the most with their ideas and innovations.
Not surprisingly, Mark Zuckerberg tops the list, closely followed by Travis Kalanick of Uber, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Tim Cook & Jonathan Ive of Apple. A few other surprising people made the list, including Amy Schumer as one of the most influential comedians of the internet age, and John Oliver, TV host of the show Last Week Tonight, a show similar to Jon Stewart’s “news-as-comedy” Daily Show .
Most of these names are no surprise when you think about the changes that they’ve made to society. The fact that Taylor Swift tops the Vanity Fair’s “Powers That Be” list, beating Hillary Clinton, is a little ironic, but frankly not surprising with her recent dive in the polls.
[Image via Theo Wargo/NBC/GettyImages]
