Barack Obama to Taylor Swift: See every Time Person of the Year since 2012

Every year, Time magazine names its Person of the Year. This recipient can be an individual, group or even an object that has profoundly influenced the world over the past year.

The distinction is not an honor or endorsement but a recognition of a figure that has “most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year, for better or for worse,” the magazine’s former managing editor Walter Isaacson explained in 1998.

Time magazine has been granting the Person of the Year title since 1928 (though it started out as “Man of the Year” and became gender-neutral in 1999).

With the news of Taylor Swift receiving the title in 2023, we’re taking a look back at the people and groups who have received this honor over the past decade.

2012: Barack Obama

Shortly after being reelected for his second term, President Barack Obama was named Time’s 2012 Person of the Year.

It was the second time around for the former president, who also received the title in 2008.

“We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” Time editor Rick Stengel wrote in a 2012 Time piece about Obama’s selection.

2013: Pope Francis

Less than a year after his papacy began, Pope Francis was named Time’s Person of the Year in 2013.

The magazine’s staff noted how the “people’s pope” was working on transforming the Catholic church, and winning hearts and minds around the world with his humble attitude and outreach to his most vulnerable followers.

“So much of what he has done in his brief nine months in office has really changed the tone that is coming out of the Vatican,” Time’s managing editor Nancy Gibbs said at the time. “He is saying, ‘We are about the healing mission of the church, and not about the theological police work that had maybe been preoccupying us.’”

2014: Ebola fighters

In 2014, multiple countries in West Africa were in the throes of an Ebola epidemic — the worst in history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As the deadly virus spread in countries including Mali, Nigeria and Senegal, Time magazine featured the "Ebola fighters," a group of doctors, nurses and first responders, at the forefront of the fight against Ebola.

Each “Ebola fighter” was featured on a different Time cover.

“It’s not simply an historic event that we’re looking back on,” said one of the honorees, Dr. Kent Brantly, who is also an Ebola survivor. “It’s still happening … they’re still in the trenches fighting that war.”

2015: German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who stepped down in 2021 after 16 years in office, was named Time’s Person of the Year in 2015. 

The magazine cited Merkel’s economic leadership as well as her handling of the 2015 migrant crisis.

At a time when other nations were closing their doors to refugees fleeing violence in Syria and other countries, Germany accepted more than 1 million first-time applications from asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016, according to the Center for Global Development.

“She has stepped up in a way that was uncharacteristic even for her,” Time managing editor Gibbs told TODAY in 2015. “This year she really was tested in how she would respond to some of the most difficult challenges that any leader is facing in the world.”

2016: Donald Trump

When he was still president-elect, Donald Trump was named Time’s Person of the Year in 2016.

“For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year,” managing editor Gibbs wrote in the magazine.

Time’s cover referred to Trump as “President of the Divided States of America,” a phrase the former president took issue with in a 2016 TODAY interview.

“When you say ‘divided states of America,’ I didn’t divide them,” he said. “They’re divided now, there’s a lot of division. And we’re going to put it back together.”

2017: The Silence Breakers

The 2017 Time Person of the Year issue focused on the #MeToo movement, which had first gone viral earlier that year.

The movement kicked off as sexual assault allegations surfaced against film executive Harvey Weinstein but soon became a reckoning for dozens of powerful figures across multiple industries, with women and men coming forward with claims of sexual harassment or assault.

The Time cover featured four people who have been vocal in the #MeToo movement: Ashley Judd, Taylor Swift, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler and another person whose face wasn’t visible.

“The galvanizing actions of the women on our cover … along with those of hundreds of others, and of many men as well, have unleashed one of the highest-velocity shifts in our culture since the 1960s,” Time’s Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said in a statement.

2018: The Guardians

The 2018 Time Person of the Year issue featured four journalists, and one news organization, who paid “a terrible price” for their reporting.

Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was killed after criticizing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was one of the journalists featured.

Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were arrested in Myanmar for their reporting on the government’s brutal treatment of Rohingya Muslims, were also featured. They were subsequently released from prison in 2019.

Also featured was the Capital Gazette, a Maryland newspaper that was targeted in 2018 by a gunman, who killed five employees.

The magazine chose this group for “taking great risks in pursuit of greater truths, for the imperfect but essential quest for facts that are central to civil discourse, for speaking up and speaking out.”

2019: Greta Thunberg

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg became the youngest person ever, at the age of 16, to be named Time’s Person of the Year in 2019.

Thunberg, now in her 20s, galvanized young people around the world with her weekly #FridaysForFuture protests, pushing world leaders to take concrete action against climate change.

“She embodies youth activism,” Time's Felsenthal told TODAY in 2019. “Her rise in influence has been really extraordinary. She was a solo protester with a hand-painted sign 14 months ago. She’s now led millions of people around the world, 150 countries, to act on behalf of the planet, and she’s really been a key driver this year taking this issue from backstage to center.”

2020: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were co-named Time’s Person of the Year for 2020.

The distinction came soon after Biden defeated incumbent President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and after Harris made history as the U.S.’s first female vice president.

“If Donald Trump was a force for disruption and division over the past four years, Biden and Harris show where the nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experiences and world views that must find a way forward together if the American experiment is to survive,” Felsenthal wrote in an essay at the time.

2021: Elon Musk

Time named billionaire Elon Musk as 2021’s Person of the Year.

“He is reshaping life on Earth and possibly life off Earth as well,” Felsenthal told TODAY at the time.

Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, the latter of which made history in 2021 by launching the first space flight with an all-civilian crew.

Although he has faced challenges since becoming the owner of Twitter in 2022, Musk has a net worth of $244.8 billion and is the wealthiest person in the world at the time of this article's publication, according to Forbes.

“We are in this new gilded age where, like it or not, so much of our lives, even in this moment of incredible inequality, are being shaped by these very wealthy tech leaders,” Felsenthal said.

2022: Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Spirit of Ukraine

In 2022, Time named Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy its Person of the Year, as well as the Spirit of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy and his country were given the honor after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Zelenskyy refused to leave Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, and instead stayed on the ground and provided support to the people of his country.

In response to Zelenskyy's actions and Ukraine not backing down, Time's Felsenthal thought it would be good to give Zelenskyy his flowers.

“Whether one looks at this story of Ukraine with a sense of hope or a sense of fear, and the story is, of course, not fully written yet ... Zelenskyy has really galvanized the world in a way we haven’t seen in decades,” he said.

2023: Taylor Swift

In 2023, Time magazine hailed Taylor Swift as its Person of the Year.

The pop superstar had quite an incredible year performing for fans on her sold-out “Eras Tour,” rereleasing her old albums that have shattered streaming records, becoming the first female artist to reach 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify and also releasing the biggest concert movie of all time, "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour."

Needless to say, Swift has had a really busy year, and lately, she's been doing it all while dating Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce.

In the 96 years that Time has named a Person of the Year, Swift is the first entertainer to receive the designation solo.

In an introduction, Time’s Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs explained why Swift was given this honor.

“Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light,” Jacobs’ piece reads. “No one else on the planet today can move so many people so well. Achieving this feat is something we often chalk up to the alignments of planets and fates, but giving too much credit to the stars ignores her skill and her power. Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com