So many celebrities joined Taylor Swift on stage for her 1989 World Tour in 2015 that even a fan made a hilarious parody about the excessive cameos. Everyone from Mick Jagger to Mariska Hargitay stopped by the top-selling arena show—which was a bit of a flex for Swift. This was a woman who, at 25 years old, had the power to call anyone and invite them to perform. And they'd say yes. If that isn't influence, what is? I don't think there's many musicians today who could do something similar. Beyoncé or Rihanna, sure. But Taylor Swift is the only one who actually has, and it's one of the many reasons she's this decade's most ubiquitous artist.

To be clear, there are artists who released better albums (RiRi), had more of a cultural impact (Bey), and performed better on the singles charts (Ed Sheeran, Drake)—but Taylor Swift is one of the few performers this decade who successfully hit all those marks. The records she released in the 2010s (Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation, and Lover) were critically and commercially successful; the singles did well on Billboard's Hot 100; and Swift herself fueled several cultural discussions between 2010 and 2019.

Taylor Swift on her RED Tour in 2014. Getty Images

I could list each of those discussions here, but you don't have all day. If you paid even an ounce of attention to entertainment this decade, you can name one. In fact, you probably can name several, and they'll be scattered throughout the past 10 years: her relationships with John Mayer (2010) and Harry Styles (2012), the Katy Perry "Bad Blood" feud (2014), the Kim Kardashian/Kanye West "Famous" Snapchat debacle (2016), the $1 sexual misconduct trial (2017), her current bliss with British actor Joe Alwyn (2019). To say she permeated pop-culture in the 2010s would be a massive understatement.

But Swift's influence on music this decade goes far past what singles charted and which ex-boyfriends she called out. Those two measurements are quite trivial when compared to the music itself—the sonics, that is. Taylor isn't the first country artist to dabble in pop—both Shania Twain and Faith Hill have done it, to varying degrees—but she is the first to do it in its totality. And, along the way, she broke new ground.