Swiftie ascent
The release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) this month has seen Taylor Swift achieve her 12th #1 album to date, beating the record for chart-topping albums by female artists that was previously held by Barbra Streisand. That confirms Swift as modern music royalty, placing her 3rd alongside Drake for the most #1 albums of all time, surpassed only by The Beatles (19) and Jay-Z (14).
Sounding like a broken record
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) went straight to #1 in the Billboard charts, making up nearly 1 in 4 of all album sales worldwide in its first week. She is the first woman and only living solo artist to have 11 albums concurrently charting on the Billboard 200, as well as the only artist to have ever achieved a new #1 album in each of the last five calendar years (2019–23). Perhaps most incredibly of all, a staggering 25 out of the 100 biggest songs on the Billboard Hot list are by the Pennsylvania-born singer. Indeed, Swift has broken so many records, there isn’t space to write about them all.
Era(s)-defining
Swift’s re-recorded albums — a campaign she has embarked on following the sale of her first 6 album masters to music mogul Scooter Braun — have arguably intensified the love story between the artist and her loyal fanbase of "Swifties", as evidenced by the demand for her Eras World Tour.
The 131-show tour, which features a variety of tracks from her extensive catalog, has meant that Swift’s entire discography has soared in popularity in the past months. The latest daily data from Spotify places her at some 98 million streams a day, more than double the next most popular artist, Bad Bunny, who is racking up “only” 48 million streams a day.
What's perhaps most remarkable though, is that in a music industry where the “collab” has become commonplace, Swift’s appeal as a solo artist is currently unmatched.
