Here Are All of Taylor Swift’s Biggest Accomplishments in 2022

[Taylor Swift]

From earning an honorary doctorate to smashing records with her new album Midnights, Taylor had a massive year.

 

Taylor Swift

 

 

It’s Taylor Swift‘s world, and we’re just living in it. Whether you’re counting awards, sales, chart success or all of the above, the 32-year-old pop star had a huge year — and that’s even by Swift’s standards.

But where to begin? There’s that time in May when she achieved her longtime goal of being bestowed with an honorary doctorate, donning NYU’s purple and black robes alongside thousands of other graduates to deliver 2022’s commencement speech. Or, there’s that time at the Tribeca Film Festival, and then again at the VMAs, and then again at the Toronto International Film Festival when she really stepped into her status as a filmmaker, earning recognition for her self-directed All Too Well: The Short Film.

And then there’s the obvious one: that time she dropped her tenth studio album Midnights and subsequently shattered one major record after another. Even the 11-time (soon to be more, possibly) Grammy winner herself couldn’t believe the astounding success.

“The fact that the fans have done this, the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it — I’m 32, so we’re considered geriatric pop stars,” she laughed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in October, in one of only a couple interviews she did for the Midnights release cycle. “They start trying to put us out to pasture at age 25, I’m just happy to be here.”

Keep reading to see a full list of Taylor Swift’s biggest career highs in 2022 below.

1  Awarded Honorary Doctorate From NYU

Taylor Swift

 

Just call her Dr. Swift. Fans have known for years that Tay is an expert at writing songs about love and heartbreak, but at NYU’s graduation ceremony on May 18, she officially received the credentials to prove it upon being granted an honorary doctorate in fine arts.

Swift was also charged with delivering the year’s commencement address, which she spent imparting advice, wisdom and hilarious references. “Let me just say, welcome to New York, it’s been waiting for you,” she joked at the beginning of her speech, and at the end: “So let’s just keep dancing like we’re … the class of ’22.”

2  Honored at Tribeca Film Fest and TIFF

 

Taylor Swift

In June, Swift was an honored guest at the Tribeca Film Festival for her work as a blossoming filmmaker after taking the plunge into short film directing with All Too Well: The Short Film. The pop star answered questions about the short, which stars Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink, and performed her Hot 100 No. 1 “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” on guitar.

Three months later, she did it all over again at the Toronto International Film Festival, where she premiered All Too Well: The Short Film on 35mm film for the very first time. “I’d like to keep taking baby steps forward and I’m at a place now where the next baby step is not a baby step,” she said during an “In Conversation With” event, saying she’s open to directing a full-length visual project.

“It would be committing to making a film and I feel like I would absolutely love for the right opportunity to arise, because I absolutely adore telling stories this way.”

3  Won Video of the Year at VMAs

 

Taylor Swift

 

Sunday, Aug. 28 is a day that will live in Swiftie infamy. Not only was Swift the top winner at the 2022 VMAs, taking home video of the year, best long-form video and best direction for All Too Well: The Short Film, but she also shocked millions of fans across the world by announcing her tenth studio record Midnights during one of her acceptance speeches.

That night, she became the first artist to win video of the year three times, having previously won the honors for 2015’s “Bad Blood” and 2019’s “You Need to Calm Down.” “All Too Well”  became the first video directed by the artist without a credited collaborator to win video of the year, and Swift is also now just the second person to win best direction twice for work on their own videos (following Kendrick Lamar for co-directing “Alright” and “HUMBLE.”).

4  Awarded Songwriter of the Decade by NSAI

 

Taylor Swift
 

In a huge full circle moment, Swift returned to Nashville, the place where it all started for her, to accept songwriter of the decade from the Nashville Songwriters Association International in September. At the awards ceremony at Ryman Auditorium, the star performed “All Too Well (10 Minute Version)” on solo guitar and gave a speech sharing details of her songwriting process.

“I’m up here receiving this beautiful award for a decade of work, and I can’t possibly explain how nice that feels,” she said during the speech. “Because the way I see it, this is an award that celebrates a culmination of moments. Challenges. Gauntlets laid down. Albums I’m proud of. Triumphs. Strokes of luck or misfortune. Loud, embarrassing errors and the subsequent recovery from those mistakes, and the lessons learned from all of it.

“This award celebrates my family and my co-writers and my team,” she continued. “My friends and my fiercest fans and my harshest detractors and everyone who entered my life or left it. Because when it comes to my songwriting and my life, they are one in the same. As the great Nora Ephron once said, ‘Everything is copy.'”

5  Broke Several Major Records With ‘Midnights’

 

Taylor Swift
 

Like dominoes cascading in a line, Tay seemed to break one record after another following the Oct. 21 release of Midnights, which featured 13 tracks (on the standard version) of her first autobiographical material since 2019’s Lover. Earning more than 2.6 million equivalent album units since its release, according to Luminate, the record made Swift the first artist ever to occupy the entire top 10 spots on the Hot 100 in a single week — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Midnights also surpassed Drake’s Certified Lover Boy record for most top 10 hits from one album, and tied Swift with Barbra Streisand for most No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 among women (11). It was also the first album to sell over 1 million copies (totaling 1.14 million) in one week since Swift’s own Reputation in 2017; in fact, the pop star has had five different albums sell more than 1 million in a single week, making her the only artist to have more than two.

Midnights‘ debut week also registered 549.3 million official U.S. on-demand streams and tallied the third-biggest streaming week ever, behind Drake’s Scorpion (745.92 million) and Certified Lover Boy (743.67 million), respectively.

6  Scored Ninth No. 1 With ‘Anti-Hero’

 

Taylor Swift
 

Swift scored her ninth career No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Anti-Hero,” the lead single off Midnights. At the time of publication, the track is currently on its sixth week in the top spot.

Her previous No. 1s are “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (2012), “Shake It Off” (2014), “Blank Space” (2014), “Bad Blood,” featuring Kendrick Lamar (2015), “Look What You Made Me Do” (2017) “Willow” (2020), “Cardigan” (2020) and “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” (2021).

7  Became First Act to Spent One Year At No. 1 on Artist 100

 

Taylor Swift
 

Swift made Billboard history in early November when she became the first artist to top the Artist 100 chart for 52 total weeks, a.k.a., a whole year. She also reached 15 total weeks having simultaneous No. 1s on the Hot 100, Billboard 200 and Artist 100, second only to Drake, who’s topped the Big Three simultaneously for 16 total weeks in his career.

8  Crowned Top Winner at EMAs

 

Taylor Swift
 

Tay was the top winner at the 2022 MTV EMAs, taking home four awards total: best artist, best video, best pop and best longform video for All Too Well: The Short Film.

9  Picked Up Four Grammy Nominations

 

Taylor Swift
 

Pretty much only Taylor Swift could earn four Grammy nominations and have it be one of her more casual work days of the year. But with 11 Gramophones already under her belt, the pop star is now in the running for 2023’s song of the year with “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” best country song for “I Bet You Think About Me,” best song written for visual media for Where The Crawdads Sing‘s “Carolina” and best music video for All Too Well: The Short Film.

10  Earned Historic Ticket Sales For Eras Tour

 

Taylor Swift
 

This achievement made millions of fans blisteringly angry, but it’s an achievement just the same. Swift broke the record for most tickets ever sold in a single day by a touring artist, filling 2 million seats during the Eras Tour presale alone. In fact, 90% of available tickets for the North American shows were spoken for by the end of the day, forcing Ticketmaster to fully cancel the general public sale scheduled for a later date.

The ticketing process was so messy, Swift herself released a statement calling out Ticketmaster for failing to meet the high demand, even though she said the company had promised her several times leading up to the sale that it would be prepared. This led to Ticketmaster issuing a public apology to her and her fans, writing in a statement that “never before has a Verified Fan onsale sparked so much attention — or traffic… This disrupted the predictability and reliability that is the hallmark of our Verified Fan platform.”

11  Won Six American Music Awards

 

Taylor Swift
 

Swift nearly had too many trophies to hold at the AMAs, where she won for favorite pop album, favorite female pop artist, favorite female country artist, favorite country album, favorite music video and finally, artist of the year — marking her 40th total award and extending her record as most awarded artist in AMAs history.

“You know, in the past few years I have released more music than I have in the entire decade preceding that,” she said during her acceptance speech for artist of the year. “And I really feel like that’s down to the fact that you, the fans, made it clear that you wanted to hear lots of music that I would make. You encouraged me. And so I found that the more music I made, the most music I put out, the happier I was, the more I just kept that channel open and kept creating, kept making things, and the more that happened, the more you guys were like ‘yay, keep doing it!’

“I cannot express how unbelievable it is to me that I still get to do this and that you still care, so thank you underlined with 13 exclamation points,” she continued. “I don’t know what to say. I love you.”

12  Wrapped 2022 As the Year's Top Female Artist

 

Taylor Swift
 

Swift notched another win when Billboard revealed its year-end 2022 charts. The pop icon was the Top Female Artist in 2022, as well as the No. 2 Artist of 2022, behind Bad Bunny on the latter list. This is her sixth time as Billboard‘s Top Female Artist of the Year.

She also captured the prize for the Top Billboard 200 Album Artist of the year, while Midnights came in as No. 1 on Vinyl Albums.

Billboard’s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 20, 2021 through Nov. 12, 2022. The rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology details, and the November-November time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate. The Top Artists and Top New Artists categories ranks the best-performing overall acts, and new acts, of the year based on activity on the Billboard 200 album and Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, as well as Billboard Boxscore (touring) data, for the 2022 tracking period.

13  Golden Globe Nomination

 

Taylor Swift

With just two weeks to go before the end of the year, Swift snagged another accolade to round out her 2022. The singer’s track “Carolina” from Where the Crawdads Sing earned Swift her fourth career Golden Globe nomination on Dec. 12, following previously nominated tracks “Safe & Sound from The Hunger Games (2012), “Sweeter Than Fiction” from One Chance (2013) and “Beautiful Ghosts” from Cats (2019).