“People” Magazine Celebrates 40th Anniversary with Retro Taylor Swift Cover & More

Courtesy People Magazine(NEW YORK) — Taylor Swift covers People magazine’s 40th anniversary issue, which is on stands Friday.  The cover is a recreation of the magazine’s very first issue back in March of 1974, which showed Mia Farrow in character as Daisy Buchanan in what was then her current movie, The Great Gatsby.  Inside, the special issue has a look at some of the magazine’s most memorable covers, but as Staff Editor Antoinette Coulton points out, it’s not all celebrities, all the time.

“The interesting thing about that [is that] it just runs the gamut — whether or not it’s a celebrity or it’s a big crime story,” Coulton tells ABC News Radio. “And what we’re really good at is sitting down with the celebrities and really getting in-depth on their lives and what they’re going through. And it’s just a mix of that that our readers seem to love.”

Among the covers highlighted: the election of Barack Obama, the O.J. Simpson trial, the investigation into Jon Benet Ramsay’s death, the story of teen AIDS patient Ryan White, the aftermath of 9/11, the birth of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s daughter Shiloh, the deaths of Michael Jackson and Robin Williams, Adam Levine’s selection as The Sexiest Man Alive and features on Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, the British Royal family, Julia Roberts and Britney Spears.

The issue includes many additional fun features, such as a list of the advice celebrities would give to their younger selves; scenes from classic movies recreated by stars like Kevin Hart, Sarah Silverman and Seth Meyers; a feature comparing Princess Diana and Kate Middleton; a list of stars who are turning 40 this year; a look at fashion trends; a roundup of the most heinous crimes of the past four decades; and People’s “Ones to Watch” list, highlighting the stars of tomorrow.

“We’re used to bringing you the celebs that a lot of people know,” Coulton says of the concept. “We wanted to also bring you celebs that we feel are on the rise and hopefully a  year, two years from now they’ll be at the level of the Brad Pitts and the Matthew McConaugheys.”

Running down some of those rising stars on the list, Coulton says, “We’ve picked people like Meghan Trainor, who had a great hit with the song ‘All About That Bass,’ which kind of addresses body image and just being happy with yourself. We’ve got Ki Hong Lee, who was in The Maze Runner, which was just number one at the box office. And we’ve got the cast of How to Get Away with Murder. So we’ve got a lot of stars in here that we think people should be looking at for the future.”

As for why People magazine has been around for 40 years, Coulton says it’s simple.

“I think it’s one of those things that readers know that whatever they get from us, it’s going to be the truth,” she tells ABC News Radio. “We’re not going to make things up or speculate. And we go to the source. We go to the celebrities to get the news and they’re coming to us. And I feel that our readers trust that if they really want to know what’s going on, then People magazine is where they can go.”

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