This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally Artist News Digital Labels & Publishers One Liners Releases
Taylor Swift sells lots of records shocker
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 27 July 2020
If Taylor Swift surprise releases, totally out of the blue, a really rather good new album, will it sell and stream shitloads? Well, I mean, is the Pope catholic?
Actually, technically no, he’s Eastern Orthodox. Because the official title of the Pope you’re thinking of isn’t actually ‘Pope’. Don’t you just love a bit of pedantry on a Monday? Especially popery pedantry. But don’t worry. Bears definitely do shit in the woods. And the deserts, and the forests, and the tundra, depending on the bears. And when Taylor Swift surprise releases, totally out of the blue, a really rather good new album, it sells and streams shitloads.
Here’s an update her label posted on Saturday. “In under 24 hours, Taylor Swift’s five star album ‘Folklore’ sold over 1.3 million copies around the world. It also shattered ‘the global record for first-day album streams on Spotify by a female artist’, with 80.6 million streams, and delivered ‘the most-streamed album on Apple Music in 24 hours’ with 35.47 million streams. Additionally, ‘Folklore’ set the US and worldwide Amazon Music indie/alternative streaming record”.
So, well done Swifty. Quite the achievement. Not quite big enough, however, for us to ignore the CMU style guide and allow you the lowercase ‘f’ on ‘Folklore’. You have to do really well for us to ignore the CMU style guide and adopt any grammatical idiosyncrasies you’ve employed in your album title. But you were nearly there, Taylor. Very nearly.
In related news, Swift’s main collaborator on the new record, Aaron Dessner of The National, has told Zane Lowe that he had to lie to his eight year old daughter in order to help ensure the surprise release remained a surprise. In an interview with Apple Music’s Beats 1, he said: “I was so glad that we kept it [a surprise] because I didn’t want to be the one that spilled the beans”.
“I have a eight year old daughter, and one day she asked me, ‘Daddy, do you know Taylor Swift?'”, he went on. “It was the morning after we’d written one of these songs. And every time we would write a song, it was like a weird lightning bolt, getting this struck by lightning or something, just exhilarated with electricity. I just looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘No’. I honoured my confidentiality”.
Look at that, Taylor Swift forcing a parent to lie to his child. Now I’m definitely glad we didn’t budge on the lowercase ‘f’ thing. Though, you know, the surprise was kind of nice, wasn’t it? Even if surprise releases from superstar artists tend to fuck up the marketing plans of everyone else. But hey, we all like a good surprise, don’t we? And the surprise release worked. Did I mention ‘Folklore’ has enjoyed sales and streams by the shitload?
