Swift released her seventh studio album, Lover, on August 23, 2019. Lover was Swift's sixth consecutive album to sell more than 500,000 copies in a single week, making Swift the first female artist to do so. All 18 songs from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100 the same week, setting a record for the most simultaneous entries by a woman. It was the world's best-selling studio album of 2019, selling 3.2 million copies. Three singles preceded the release of Lover: "Me!", "You Need to Calm Down", and "Lover", all of which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Me!" debuted at number 100 and rose to number two a week later, scoring the biggest single-week jump in chart history. The last single, "The Man", reached the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100. At the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, "Me!" won Best Visual Effects, and "You Need to Calm Down" won Video of the Year and Video for Good. Swift was the first female and second artist overall to win Video of the Year for a video that they directed. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) honored Swift as the global best-selling artist of 2019. This made Swift the first woman to win the honor twice; she had previously won in 2014.
In June 2019, talent manager Scooter Braun acquired Big Machine Records, Swift's former record label, and the masters for her first six studio albums. Swift disdained the transaction, stating she had been trying to buy the masters for years, and described Braun as an "incessant, manipulative bully". In August, Swift announced plans to rerecord the albums in November 2020. In November, Swift said that Braun and Big Machine founder Scott Borchetta had blocked her from performing her older songs at the 2019 American Music Awards and from using older material for her Netflix documentary Miss Americana. After a series of disputes, Big Machine issued a statement saying it had "agreed to grant all licenses of their artists' performances to stream post show and for re-broadcast on mutually approved platforms" for the American Music Awards, though it did not mention Swift by name. In April 2020, Big Machine released Live from Clear Channel Stripped 2008, a live album of Swift's performances at a 2008 radio show, which Swift did not authorize.
At the 2019 American Music Awards, Swift won six awards, including Artist of the Year and Artist of the Decade. Swift cast as Bombalurina in the movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats (2019). She recorded and released "Beautiful Ghosts", an original song she wrote with Webber for the film's soundtrack in November 2019. Although critics reviewed the film negatively, Swift's role received positive feedback. Her documentary Miss Americana premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released on Netflix on January 31. The documentary features the song "Only the Young", which Swift wrote after the 2018 United States elections. In February 2020, Swift signed an exclusive global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group, after her 16-year-old contract with Sony/ATV Music Publishing expired. Footage from Swift's 2019 City of Lover concert in Paris, which was part of a promotion campaign for her album Lover, aired on ABC on May 17, 2020. Swift released live versions of the Lover tracks she performed at the concert after the television special's premiere.
In 2019, Swift was named Woman of the Decade of the 2010s by Billboard and became the first woman to earn the title Artist of the Decade (2010s) at the American Music Awards. Swift and her work have influenced various recording artists, including Kelsea Ballerini, Shamir Bailey, Shawn Mendes, Bailey Bryan, Ruth B., Camila Cabello, The Chainsmokers, Girl in Red, Selena Gomez, Ellie Goulding, Conan Gray, Halsey, Niall Horan, Maren Morris, Nina Nesbitt, Niki, Finneas O'Connell, Katy Perry, Olivia Rodrigo, Tegan and Sara, Troye Sivan, and The Vamps.
Swift has sold over 50 million albums, including 37.3 million in the U.S., and 150 million singles worldwide. She has amassed more than 97 million units in global album consumption, including 54 billion streams, as of February 2020. In 2019, Billboard placed Swift eighth on its Greatest of All Time Artists Chart. She is the woman with the most cumulative weeks (48) atop the Billboard 200 and the highest certified female digital singles artist in the U.S., with a total of 134 million units certified by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). She is the first female artist to have both an album (Fearless) and a song ("Shake It Off") certified Diamond by the RIAA. The top female touring artist of the 2010s, she broke the record for the highest-grossing U.S. tour of all time with her Reputation Stadium Tour (2018).
Swift donated to American singer-songwriter Kesha to help with her legal battles against Dr. Luke and to actress Mariska Hargitay's Joyful Heart Foundation organization. In 2019, she donated $113,000 to the LGBT organization Tennessee Equality Project, as well as to the media advocacy organization GLAAD in support of Pride Month. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Swift donated to the World Health Organization and Feeding America and offered one of her signed guitars as part of an auction to raise money for the National Health Service. Swift performed "Soon You'll Get Better" during One World: Together At Home television special, a benefit concert curated by Lady Gaga for Global Citizen to raise funds for the World Health Organization's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. In June 2020, she donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in light of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement and urged fans to do the same. As well as charitable causes, Swift has made donations to many of her fans.
Swift identifies as a feminist and pro-choice. During the 2008 United States presidential election, she promoted the Every Woman Counts campaign, aimed at engaging women in the political process. She was one of many country stars to record a PSA for the Vote (For Your) Country campaign. During her acceptance speech at the Billboard Women in Music summit in 2019, she spoke out against sexism and misogyny. She was one of the founding signatories of the Time's Up movement against sexual harassment. Swift has also spoken out against LGBT discrimination. Following the 2008 murder of openly gay teenager Larry King, she recorded a GLSEN PSA aimed at combating hate crimes. The music video for Swift's anti-bullying song "Mean" deals in part with homophobia in high schools; it was nominated for an MTV VMA social activism award in 2011. After the Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016, Swift penned a letter to honor the victims. She encouraged support for the Equality Act in a letter addressed to Senator Lamar Alexander and a petition on Change.org, which accumulated over 800,000 signatures and responses from the White House and various Democratic legislators. Swift called on the Trump administration to pass the Equality Act at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards and during Pride Live's 2020 Stonewall Day livestream event, where she criticized the 2020 U.S. Census for excluding transgender and non-binary people.