RED Era
2012-2014
«At 22, I was already watching newer, cooler artists come out every week. I was already feeling like, 'You know, shit. I'm on my fourth record, what can I offer people?' That was sort of when I was like, 'No, you know what? I don't want this to be the part of me that stays in this one place musically forever and bores people to death. It was an interesting wrestling match with my own fears of remaining stagnant that made RED the kind of joy ride that it ended up being.»
Table of Contents
Shifting From Country to Pop
Taylor had certainly done well trusting her instincts. She was the reigning Billboard “Woman of the Year”, an honor that recognized her sales (more than 50 million digital tracks and 22 million albums at the end of 2011, according to SoundScan) and multitude of awards (Academy of Country Music and Country Music Assn. “Entertainer of the Year”; Billboard Music Awards for “Top Country Album”, “Top Billboard 200 Artist” and “Top Country Artist”).
Painting the World RED
RED was finally released on October 22, 2012, incorporating new genres, such as heartland rock, dubstep and dance-pop. The album was a critical and commercial success, and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 1.21 million copies. This marked the highest opening sales in a decade, and made Taylor the first female to have two million-selling album openings, a record recognized by Guinness World Records.
RED hit No. 1 in more than 50 countries; meanwhile, Taylor won another Grammy (for “Safe & Sound“), and rocked karaoke with the Duke of Cambridge, after she had wrapped the North American leg of her “RED Tour” near the end of 2013. In the same year, Vulture wrote: “In an age of catastrophic music-industry contraction, Swift stands apart; sometimes she has seemed like a one-woman bulwark against the collapse of the traditional record business.” At the end of 2013, Taylor admitted that she “is loving this year. I am slightly terrified for this year to end.”
In 2020, Taylor said that in hindsight RED was her only real breakup album. She told Rolling Stone:
«I look back on RED as my true breakup album. Every other album has flickers of different things. But this was an album that I wrote specifically about pure, absolute, to the core heartbreak.»


Media Scrutiny
Side Projects
RED Tour and Accolades
«I felt so proud and still feel so proud of my origins in Nashville. But at a certain point, I started to feel like, ‘Am I allowed to color outside the lines here?’ And it really was amazing, on RED, to realize, ‘Oh, I'm allowed in these rooms, I'm accepted in these rooms.’ That was something that freed me up for a world of change and challenge and innovation. I never would've had the bravery to make the full leap into pop music, if I hadn't been able to do what I did with RED and to work with the people that I worked with. I will always look back on it and think, ‘Wow, that was really the beginning of everything that I'm doing [now].»
Associated Album | RED | |||
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Beginning of Era | August 2012 | |||
End of Era | June 2014 | |||
Tour | ||||
Aesthetic | Fall Vintage Hipster Maple latte Red, black and white | |||
Style | Retro (1950s) Vintage dresses High-waisted shorts Striped shirts Laceup oxfords Kitten heels Ray-Ban sunglasses Bangs and straight hair Winged eyeliner Red lipstick | |||
ERA CHRONOLOGY | ||||
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