At midnight on 19 April last year, Taylor Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department.
It was an emotional garage sale. Over 31 tracks of heartbreak and emotional longing, Swift picked at the scabs of her romances with the rock star Matty Healy and actor Joe Alwyn, while pushing back at social media critics and documenting the pressures of fame.
The reviews were middling at best. Music magazine NME suggested it was a “rare misstep” for Swift, with some “cringe-inducing” lyrics. The New York Times described it as “insular” and “self-indulgent”.
My own review bemoaned the lack of editing, calling Swift “prolific to a fault”.
Others were more complimentary – Rolling Stone called the album “gloriously chaotic” – though the response clearly didn’t match the near-universal acclaim of Swift’s earlier work.
But guess what? Those tepid reviews didn’t matter.
Spotify declared it their most-streamed album in a single day. In the UK, it enjoyed the biggest first-week sales in seven years. Right now, it seems nothing can damage Swift. Her newest album, The Life of a Showgirl, is released tomorrow and it’s difficult to see any way that it doesn’t perform phenomenally well.
More than five million fans have pre-saved it on Spotify (the largest number in the company’s history) and pre-orders for a special vinyl edition sold out from Swift’s online shop in less than an hour. And that’s all before they’ve heard it.
Swift, at 35, appears to have become too big to fail. Her place as one of the all-time greats is assured. But can her hot streak continue, as public taste shifts towards “messier” singers who are more upfront about their vulnerabilities?
Credit: bbc.com
