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Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ Breaks 4 Spotify Records and More in Its 1st Week
The ~Mastermind~ has done it again! Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, has broken four Spotify records in the week since its release
Impressively enough, the first broken record came one day before the album arrived. The streaming platform announced via X on April 18 that TTPD had become “the most pre-saved album Countdown Page in Spotify history.”
Introduced in March 2023, Countdown Pages allow fans to pre-save an album, watch clips and see a countdown until the album’s official release.
Upon TTPD’s release on April 19, the opening track, “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone, broke another Spotify record. It became the platform’s most-streamed song in a single day. The album as a whole also became the most-streamed album in a single day with more than 300 million streams.
But of course, the Swifties didn’t stop there. Spotify announced on Wednesday, April 24, that The Tortured Poets Department had achieved 1 billion streams in just five days, becoming the first album to do so. It has since surpassed the 1 billion streams mark.
TTPD has also broken records elsewhere in its first week. Taylor, 34, broke her own record for the most vinyl record sales, having sold 700,000 vinyl copies of TTPD during week one. For comparison, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) sold 693,000 vinyl records in its first week. Additionally, over on Apple Music, TTPD became “the biggest pop album of all time by first-day streams,” according to the platform.
Taylor, 34, announced The Tortured Poets Department during her acceptance speech for Best Pop Vocal Album — which she won for her 2022 album, Midnights — at the 2024 Grammys on February 4.
“OK. This is my 13th Grammy. Which is my lucky number, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that,” she told the audience. “I wanna say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand new album comes out April 19. It’s called The Tortured Poets Department.”
The pop star concluded, “I’m gonna go and post the cover right now backstage. Thank you, I love you, thank you.”
Keeping her word, Taylor quickly shared the album artwork for TTPD on her social media. The black and white image showed the “Cruel Summer” hitmaker wearing black underwear as she rested on a white bed and held her arms across her chest, looking at the camera. However, only the lower half of her face was visible. A single ray of light washed over her.
“All’s fair in love and poetry …” Taylor captioned the post.
Along with the artwork, the singer shared a photo of a handwritten note signed by “The Chairman of The Tortured Poets Department.”
“And so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms. My muses, acquired like bruises, my talismans and charms. The tick, tick, tick of love bombs. My veins of pitch black ink,” the note read. “All’s fair in love and poetry.”
As Taylor returned to her Eras tour in the days after the album announcement, she shared with her fans a few more details about its creation and how important it was to her. During her concert in Tokyo, Japan, on February 7, the Grammy winner revealed that she started working on TTPD “right after” she turned in Midnights. Taylor also pointed out that albums are turned in “months in advance,” which gave her plenty of private time to write her 11th project.
“I’ve been working on it for about two years,” she told the crowd at the Tokyo Dome. “I kept working on it throughout the U.S. tour and when it was perfect, in my opinion … when it was good enough for you … I finished it. And I am so excited that soon you’ll get to hear it. Soon we’ll get to experience it together.”
During her February 16 concert at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds in Melbourne, Australia, Taylor told her fans that writing The Tortured Poets Department became her “lifeline.” Many have speculated that the album was written about her split from longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
“I needed to make it,” she said. “It sort of reminded me of why songwriting is something that actually gets me through life and I’ve never had an album where I’ve needed songwriting more than I needed it on Tortured Poets.”
