From Sabrina Carpenter’s “Surprise Songs” to Nina Chuba’s Female Rage: These seven artists relied on Swift strategies in 2025 and shaped pop culture.
The year 2025 also had some successes in store for Taylor Swift. From the news that, after a long battle, the 36-year-old finally has the rights to the master recordings of her first six studio albums, to the release of her album THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL, to the announcement of the “The End Of An Era” documentary, which will be released in stages on Disney+ from December 12th.
The megastar has been setting new standards for himself and his colleagues for almost two decades. We have created a list of artists who have followed in their footsteps in 2025.
1. Touring & Surprise Songs: Sabrina Carpenter
Sabrina Carpenter has developed into a performer who almost collects the special live moments. This is partly due to her experience as a support act on “The Eras” tour, where she learned how exciting setlists can be when there is an element of surprise involved.
Taylor Swift performed so-called “Surprise Songs” every evening on her tour – always varying tracks that were not part of the original setlist. Carpenter confidently incorporated these surprise acts into her own shows on the Short n’ Sweet tour – a clear Swift influence, which she put her own spin on with her typically witty, raunchy charm.
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Here is the surprise song “Mama Mia” by Abba:
2. Songwriting: Malcum Todd
The 22-year-old singer and songwriter brings a new kind of understatement to the US indie pop landscape: He writes songs that sound like someone accidentally published parts of his note-taking app. Little observations from his everyday life keep cropping up – typical of the musician who has found his niche between R&B and bedroom pop. This reserved form of songwriting still tells stories with a lot of emotion – Taylor Swift’s supreme discipline.
The track “Chest Pain (I Love)” offers a glimpse into the artist’s songwriting:
3. Meteoric Rise: Olivia Dean
The London-born Olivia Dean played her way into the top league of Brit-pop in 2025 – even though she comes from a more intimate soul and jazz background. Her album, her stage appearances, her presence on talk shows: everything suddenly has a ripple effect that goes far beyond the UK market. The singer manages to maintain her style as the hype around her grows. This makes her meteoric rise comparable to the countless moments in which Taylor Swift moved to a new level globally.
Listen to the song that helped the Brit reach a global audience here:
4. Genre pro: Olly Alexander
The former frontman of the electro-pop band Years & Years, Olly Alexander, uses pop like other people use color: expressive, fearless, queer and full of drama. The fact that he used to shape Years & Years always shines through in his new songs, but as a solo artist he reinterprets the synth-pop aesthetic for himself. The way he makes a genre his own rather than submitting to it is an approach that Taylor Swift also takes – albeit with completely different means.
In “Cupid’s Bow” all the characteristics come together:
5. Female Rage and Identity Finding: Nina Chuba
For Nina Chuba, pop is always a question of attitude. It switches effortlessly between rap elements, anthem character and playful self-assertion – a mix that is particularly popular with the young generation, who see pop as an expression of their own identity. Taylor Swift particularly achieved this with her record THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT; in “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” she sings about female rage – as does the 26-year-old in “Rage Girl”.
She also shares a charming peculiarity with the pop star: both have discovered that baking sourdough bread is a surprisingly effective way to balance out the stress of touring and dedicate a considerable amount of their free time to their newfound hobby.
In “Rage Girl” Nina Chuba doesn’t mince her words:
6. Digital Roots: Alex Warren
Alex Warren knows the digital stage better than many musicians of his generation – after all, he started out as a social media personality before establishing himself as a singer-songwriter. You can hear this origin in his emotional pop ballads, which are very directly formulated and rely heavily on community ties.
Swift revolutionized the relationship with her fans through digital proximity back in the days of MySpace and the early days of YouTube. Warren follows up on this, but from the perspective of a creator who had a lot of publicity even before his first single.
The hit “Ordinary” has served as the basis for countless creations since its release on social media in February:
7. New fan base: Alessi Rose
The song “Bittersweet” embodies the prevailing themes in Roses’ songs: coming of age and vulnerability:
23-year-old artist Alessi Rose reaches an audience that primarily discovers music online – an advantage for a singer whose style oscillates between delicate indie pop and an emotional coming-of-age vibe. There is a feeling of youthful openness in her texts that works particularly well digitally. Like Taylor Swift in her early years, she manages to cultivate a new generation of listeners who find themselves in her authentic and vulnerable music and remain closely connected to her through social media.