Taylor Swift Breaks Staggering Record With 'Tortured Poets'

[Tom of Temecula]

Taylor Swift is no stranger to breaking records, but she's managed to outdo even herself with her latest album The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD). Swift, 34, dropped the surprise double album on Friday after announcing it during a Grammys acceptance speech in February.

Within hours, TTPD started smashing streaming records, including becoming Spotify's most streamed album in one day. TTPD got 300 million streams in a 24-hour period, Spotify revealed on its social media. This broke the previous record which Swift also held with her album Midnights which achieved the feat of 185 million listens in a day.

Swift's record-breaking with TTPD did not stop at just album streams. Her song "Fortnight" featuring the rapper Post Malone set the record as the most-streamed song in a single day. Prior to its release TTPD was breaking records, including the most pre-saved album on Countdown Pages, a Spotify feature which allows users to preview track lists before an album release.

Swift also took the title for the biggest pop album of all time by first-day streams on Apple Music and also most-streamed album on its first day alone on Amazon Music.

Link to tweet

https://www.newsweek.com/taylor-swift-records-spotify-streaming-1892649

[Fla Dem]

1. Wonder Woman!!!!!

[twodogsbarking]

2. No, It's Becky.

[Takket]

3. How do you drop a "surprise" album that you "announced" in February lol

Sorry but that sentence just made me cringe.

[ok_cpu]

6. Have seen lots of outlets use that unclear construction

The album was not a surprise. That it was a double was. I guess it's accurate as written, but feel like an editor would have taken a pencil to it a few years ago.

[Takket]

4. I thought MAGAts ended her career?

They all told me she was ruined?

[Sympthsical]

5. It is truly terrible

The entire internet's savaging of the album's lyrics has been one of my favorite things all month.

The Washington Post review is just brutal.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2024/04/20/taylor-swift-review-tortured-poets-department/

Who’s torturing who here? Sorry, sorry. That isn’t the freshest zinger to zing in the direction of this sprawling new Taylor Swift double album, but please know that after funneling 19 of its 31 tracks through my headphones on Friday morning, my phone died, as if by its own volition. Same for any hope I had that the overall mood might improve in the third act of this two-hour hostage situation, a despair made manifest once I located my charger and heard the lyric, “My friends used to play a game where we would pick a decade we wished we could live in … I’d say the 1830s, but without all the racists.”


Of course she'll sell like gangbusters. She has great marketing, a rabid fan base (her fans have been sending death threats to reviewers) and now a weird middle aged tribal partisan following that is stranger and stranger the more you think about it.

But it is so bad. My partner and I were listening to it in the kitchen while cooking and just howling. He's a bigger fan than I am, and he is so confused. I asked him if he called his best friend yet, who's a hard core Swiftie. There's a conversation I'm dying to watch. My fourteen year old niece is an obsessed Swiftie. I sent my brother a text and told him I was praying for him, lol.

[Goodheart]

7. You know.... she's amazingly beautiful, in many respects, and I wish her continued success.

But I see where the WaPo is coming from.

Her music just doesn't cut it for me. It has no depth.

Sixty years after Bob Dylan and John Lennon and Simon and Garfunkel and this is what music has become? I just don't get it. It just seems like joyful noise, and that this generation of fans is not as contemplative or skeptical as was my own.

Once again, though, I mean no disrespect to Taylor Swift. I applaud her. I appreciate her.

[Sympthsical]

8. Her problem in a nutshell

Is that she is a 34 year old who has spent the bulk of her adult life behaving as if she's still 17.

And that's understandable. Wild success, surrounded by people who will never tell her no, and a fanbase that was created and keyed in to that mean girl, but also bullied girl, but also, OMG boys aesthetic. She built her entire career on this stuff.

But there's no growth, no curiosity, no evolution. It's the same "I wrote about boys in my slam book" stuff that, again, you wouldn't think twice about from a much younger artist, but start side-eyeing real hard when you realize the person is approaching middle age.

I like some of her music. I've listened to Anti-Hero a ton this past year. It's inescapable since my partner plays it. It's catchy disposable pop, which is perfect if you're in the mood.

But that massive insulation and life of adoration she has isn't serving her well over time. What does an adult Taylor Swift look like? No one knows, and she doesn't seem to either.

[MichMan]

9. We also went from the Four Tops, Temptations, Earth Wind & Fire and the O'Jays to Rap music.

Sad

[Goodheart]

11. That too!

[TexasBushwhacker]

13. Taylor is a pop artist

Is it really fair to compare her to Lennon, Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel?

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

10. Fortnight video, 28 million views

[Goodheart]

12. I don't get it.

I love you it's ruining my life.... that part I understand.

This is what I don't understand: the word "fortnight". Yes, I know the definition, but what person these days talks like that? Now, if she had structured the song about some young woman back in Shakespeare's time, sure, but it just doesn't fit the lyrics or the video.

She's absolutely gorgeous.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

19. me either. Her music isnt my thing

[ripcord]

14. Not my type of music but she is one heck of a hard worker

[Mosby]

15. WaPo review said it sucks.

Same old breakup/relationship songs, really trite lyrics. Concluded that she isn't a very good songwriter.

[Tom of Temecula]

18. Hmmm. You'll need to explain the relevance of that.

Personally I cannot imagine the world anxiously awaiting the opinion of a Washington Post rock critic.

[DoBW]

16. is this like winning a Superbowl ?

or bigger better more betta?

[Chautauquas]

17. I like Swift

because she encourages her fans to vote, and I'm willing to bet a lot of those fans won't be voting for Trump.

As for her music, it's pop so I don't expect much. I do like a few of her songs, which is what I would say about a lot of bands. I'd really like to see her depart from her norm and surprise us all with something different, like Springsteen did with Nebraska. I think she has the raw talent to do it.