How Taylor Swift went back to the past and turned ‘Midnights’ into her biggest album success yet

Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” may have left the indie-folk lovers of her previous albums disappointed, but breaking several sales and streaming records within its release week, including taking all of the top 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100, Swift’s tenth album is her biggest success yet, breaking the record for largest overall week for any album, by equivalent album units, within just four days.“The results speak for themselves. She’s as popular as she’s ever been,” said Berklee College of Music’s music business professor George Howard. “She creates this kind of frenzy among a significant amount of fans.”

Five years ago, Swift’s “Reputation” achieved the biggest ever U.S. sales week by traditional album sales with 1.216 million copies sold. “Midnights” topped this record in just four days.
It’s not like Swift’s previous albums weren’t successful. Rather, her number of streams have consistently grown over the years as the streaming industry has captured more of the music listener market share. Last fall, “Red (Taylor’s Version)” reached 90.8 million streams within its release day and broke Spotify’s record for the most-streamed album in a day by a female artist. The previous record was 78.7 million streams — held by Swift’s “Folklore.” With “Midnights,” Swift broke her own record again, reaching 185 million streams on its release day.

What is it about “Midnights” that has made it the pop star’s biggest success yet, and why did it take Swift four more new albums to break her own record?In her acceptance speech for Video of the Year award for “All Too Well (10 minute version) (Taylor’s version) (from The Vault,)” at the VMAs in August, Swift surprised the world by announcing that she was releasing her brand new album “Midnights” on Oct. 21. Fans expected Swift’s next release to be another re-recording of one of her previous albums, as her past two albums were re-recordings with “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” released in April 2021 and “Red (Taylor’s Version)” in Nov. 2021. The fact that she broke this release pattern and announced a new album at an awards show, something she’s never

Swift disappeared from the public eye for a year following her dispute with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in 2016. Not only did she stop making public appearances, but she also took a break from social media altogether. Her absence came as a big shock to fans, who as far back as the release of “1989,” were accustomed to Swift logging on to Tumblr every night to interact with her fans.Swift’s social media presence diminished even further before the release of “Reputation,” when she deleted all her social media posts and unfollowed everyone. Four days after, the singer posted a video of a snake foreshadowing the release of her soon-to-be announced album. When the “Reputation” era began, Swift gradually began posting again, but the social media presence she once maintained was much smaller in scope. The cat photos, conversations with fans and witty comments that once flooded Swift’s social media accounts were no more. The surprise releases of “Folklore” and “Evermore” hardly received any social media posts from the star.