The most beloved artist right now in the world is undisputedly Taylor Swift. Not only likeability, but the world also acknowledged and stamped her credibility as an artist. After teasing fans with her ‘Midnight Mayhems’ videos, she released the 13-track EP ‘Midnights’ on October 21st, 2022. The day it was released, it stormed the digital space. Though it was critically underwhelming compared to her other work, the album was commercially a mega-hit.
The album had 185 million streams on its debut day. It penned history by becoming the most streamed album in the history of Spotify. ‘Midnights’ captured the nocturnal musings of the country-turned-pop artist with “a restless slumber” concept. Taylor’s albums since ‘1989′, the artist has gained a reputation for breaking records and making technically superior albums. So, is ‘Midnights’ the commercially best album of the pop icon?
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Taylor Swift Has Had A Consecutively Upward Graph
The artist has shown promise with every album that she has released. However, the journey was not smooth, rather it was a bumpy ride to the chart top for her music. In the initial days of her career, the artist wanted to make music in the Country genre since she has always been fascinated by it. Her self-titled debut album had an underwhelming response when it was released in 2006. She sold 39,000 copies of the album.
The game-changing move by the artist was the way she interacted with her fans and the origin of Swifties, one of the most loyal fan bases in the world. The country-music artist started a MySpace account, where she shared her music for the approval of the fans. The best part about the process was that she took an effort to interact with the fans and keep them on the pedestal.
The results started to be evident with her second album ‘Fearless’, which debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200 chart for 11 weeks selling 600,000 copies in its first week. That’s how the era of Taylor began. The songstress won the first three out of the eleven Grammy Awards in 2010.
The latest album created another history by having all the slots in the top 10 on Billboard 100 to be from the album. The album sold 1.57 million copies of the album in the country which was better than ‘Evermore’, which sold 1.55 million album units in its first week.
Since the EPs have gained prominence, it is important for the streaming of the album to do better to climb the Billboard 100 ladder. The 2020 album ‘folklore’ had 78.7 million streams which improved with ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ having 90.8 million streams breaking her record. The artist is breaking her records! But, with ‘Midnights’, Swift yet again broke her streaming record with 185 million streams on its release day.
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Why ‘Midnights’ Is The Most Successful Album Of The Artist
It was very symbolic and not-so-Taylor Swift when she announced her upcoming album at the MTV VMAs which holds a lot of history for the artist. The 2009 MTV VMAs started the most shocking feud of all time between Kanye West and Taylor Swift, where Kim Kardashian also jumped in. Nonetheless, the reason was that the ‘Bad Blood’ singer had enough of the hate train that Kanye and Kim created against Taylor which proved upsetting for the fans. The once-active Taylor on social media started retracting from it.
With every album since ‘1989’, the interaction with fans started diminishing. But, the shift from country to pop revived their career and she bounced back. With ‘Midnights’, Swift wisely used TikTok to promote her album. She started ‘Midnights Mayhem’ by announcing the track names from the 13-song EP. The songstress leaves easter eggs and clues for her fans to decipher.
There were multicolor vinyl and hoodies created for the promotion. Larry Miller, an NYU professor said, “She has been utterly successful at expressing herself through various genres of authentic songwriting and fan engagement.” It did show when the vinyl record sales came out. As per the reports, the album sold 575,000 vinyl sales which is the highest this year after ‘Harry’s House’.
The tour announcement sent Swifties into a delightful frenzy as the artist will be on the road after four years, four albums, and two recordings later. Now, with the upcoming awards season, we have to see whether the artist makes any new records or, well, breaks her previous ones!
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