Taylor Swift is the most successful musician in the world right now but Def Leppard had the chance to meet her and play with her back in 2008 at CMT Crossroads. In an interview with Los Angeles Times, the band’s vocalist was asked about that experience and he even compared her with names like The Beatles and Rolling Stones.
Joe Elliott compares Taylor Swift with Beatles and Stones
“I don’t think anybody could. You look at it now, and it kind of makes sense. But if you think back to 2008, there was no such thing as what she’s accomplished.”
“I know anybody that was there when The Beatles and The Stones came over will go, ‘Wait a minute…’ But for people born this century or in the ’90s, this is a phenomenon that’s never been seen before — technically bigger than The Beatles and The Stones combined, at least commercially.”
“It’s insanity, the amount of tickets she sells. But I always knew she’d be big. And for all the hardships she’s gone though — the people who’ve tried to trip her up over the years at certain parts of her career — she’s just dusted herself down. She’s a fantastic role model for a generation of kids,” Joe Elliott said.
The Rolling Stones already had once the highest-grossing tour of all time (“A Bigger Bang Tour” – 2005 to 2007). Since then many other artists have had more profitable tours than that one and one of them is Taylor Swift. Nowadays, she has the most profitable tour of all time, which is called “The Eras Tour”. With 60 dates from 2023 to 2024, the tour made more than 1 billion and 39 million dollars.
Until now she released 11 studio records, 5 EPs and four re-recorded albums of her discography. She is currently the solo artist with the most weeks at number one on the United States Billboard 200 chart. In 2023 she was the most streamed artist in Spotify, with 26.1 billion streams.