TORTURED POETS UNITE: TAYLOR IS BACK

There’s huge, massive and then there’s Swift-sized. By every metric, Taylor Swift is in a league of her own. The Republic megastar has delivered her 11th studio album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, and it’s a double, with 31 tracks. Listen here. The initial, 17-track version of the album had been out for just a few hours when Tay announced her "2am surprise" (see IG post below), delivering the 31-song ANTHOLOGY version of the set.

Word has already gotten out that Tay's new one is Spotify's most-streamed album in a single day, a record POETS claimed in just 12 hours. It also earned the most first-day streams for an album at Amazon Music. The set and its songs also ruled Apple Music and iTunes immediately. Projections for its first week are, unsurprisingly, through the roof.

TTPD is the first completely new project from Swift since 2022’s Midnights, which broke nearly every sales and streaming record in its release week. Swift then upped the ante with 1989 (Taylor’s Version), the updated version of her best-selling album.

Both LPs moved north of 1.5m units in their opening weeks. The expectation for TTPD ranges from 1-2m, according to music biz analysts. But is there any possibility that Swift, who’s successfully dominated recorded music, the live sector, the box office and the NFL over the last year and half, will not meet expectations? Would you bet against her? “Take the over” seems to be the near-unanimous response to a Swift projection.

For all of the hype surrounding “super-fans” and how to tap into that audience, one need only study Taylor Swift’s entire career. Her current standing in pop culture matches any star in any, um, era. Her mere presence at an event commands the spotlight and provokes chatter throughout the mediascape.

Judging by the line at Spotify’s TTPD library pop-up at The Grove, where fans waited upwards of four hours just to get their own footage of the Swift-approved installation, there’s nothing like Taylormania. Swifties in Chicago watched artists paint a QR code on the side of a building for hours—they literally watched paint dry awaiting an Easter egg from their idol.

Swift confirmed that “Fortnight” f/Post Malone will be the first official single from TTPD. She tapped Grammy-winning collaborators Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff once again to produce the set.

We’ll be tracking sales and streams all week, which are sure to set records in every way imaginable. But before our minds are blown by first-week numbers, Tay is making sure the world will be focused on what made Taylor Swift the acclaimed recording artist she is: her pen.

Read what Swift had to say below upon opening the door to THE TORTURED POET'S DEPARTMENT.

The Tortured Poets Department. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time - one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and… pic.twitter.com/41OObGyJDW

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 19, 2024