Taylor Swift told fans why her 34th birthday is so important all the way back in 2020

Any longtime Swiftie will feel a certain amount of anxiety over Taylor Swift‘s current sky-high level of popularity. However, as the renowned singer-songwriter turns 34, those worries become heavier, as per Taylor’s confession back in 2020.

Swift, who celebrated her birthday on Tuesday, Dec. 13, has repeatedly spoken about the figurative “expiration date” the entertainment industry places on women, but never more candidly so than in her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana. Now, as her 35th birthday draws nearer, and she has just experienced the biggest year of her career, her words have gained new meaning.

“We do exist in this society where women in entertainment are discarded in an elephant graveyard by the time they’re 35,” Taylor reflected in the surprisingly vulnerable docu-film. The “Anti-Hero” musician is not wrong — age completely influences the way women are framed in media and there’s only so much attention a female celebrity can attract before the entire world eventually gets tired of them. Taylor probably knows this better than most, and has experienced the painful downfall from the tallest heights of her career at least once before.

By Taylor’s logic, this upcoming year is her last before the musical landscape moves on to someone else. In the same documentary, she expressed her plan of working as hard as possible “while society is still tolerating me being successful.” She wasn’t even 30 when this scene from Miss Americana was captured, and considering she was just named Time‘s “Person of the Year” (the first solo musician to be granted the honor), we’d say she’s done a pretty good job of making the most of her last “tolerable” years.

For all these reasons, there’s no doubt that Taylor’s 34th trip around the sun will be a decisive year in her career, where she will certainly fight to prove her own assessment wrong. The good news is that the record-breaking artist has already figured out the formula to beating society’s revolting headline: reinvention.

Taylor Swift has moved from country to pop to indie and back to pop seamlessly in the past nearly 20 years. She’s prepared her every step carefully to make the most of her time under the spotlight and it has led to her enjoying her biggest year professionally yet in 2023. Something tells us she won’t be discarded into the “elephant graveyard” without a fight.