Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poet’s Department (TTPD) debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard charts and has stayed there for the last eleven weeks. This is despite challenges from Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism, Charli XCX’s Brat, and Gunna’s One of Wun, all peaking at no. 2. On one hand, this is hardly surprising. Ten of her eleven albums are currently on the album charts. The only album not charting right now is her debut album, Taylor Swift,[1] which will chart once she releases the Taylor’s Version. It’s an extraordinary feat and a testament to her dominance of pop music. On the other hand, TTPD received the coldest critical reception of all her albums. Many called the album too long (fair), others felt that the production, specifically the Jack Antonoff production, was stale (also fair), and others wondered whether Taylor would ever move on from songs about love and heartbreak.[2] Whilst most acknowledged that there are moments of pure genius, there were also career lows all nestled together on this album. The album wasn’t panned, it was mostly considered fine, but it is her worst reviewed album.
A cursory look through comments on Instagram Reels, reddit or twitter reveals confusion, even anger, as to how an album that critics think is mediocre could reign over the charts like it has. People have turned to explanations of album variants to explain TTPD’s chart success. But there’s no trick here. It turns out things like length, production, editing all matter less to the general public than Taylor’s storytelling. The criticism that Taylor sings about a limited number of topics misses the point. What gives TTPD its staying power is that it mines the details of Taylor’s own life to craft stories that feel intimate not only for Taylor but for the listener as well. They’re her experiences, but they could just as well be mine. Most people aren’t turning to pop music for discourse on biodiversity loss or heaven forbid – to hear Taylor’s thoughts on racism. She sings about the experiences that people of most ages and backgrounds have experienced – heartbreak, insecurity, grief, anger, aging, and even schadenfreude.
TTPD meanders its way through three different relationships. One is her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn. The other is the messy, short rebound with The 1975 frontman, Matty Healy. These two different relationships are the primary vehicles to explore very different sets of emotions and drive the tonal differences in the album. The third relationship is with Travis Kelce, her current beau. He’s thrown a bone with two fluffy songs that contribute almost nothing to the narrative of the album.
The songs on TTPD that really hit are the ones where Taylor really puts herself on the line. ‘But Daddy I Love Him’ is a stinging rebuke to the so-called fans who signed petitions asking her to end her relationship with Healy. She sings with unhinged abandon as she tells fans that this is her life to live and her reputation to ruin. The bait-and-switch of “I’m having his baby, no I’m not but you should see your faces” is a genuinely funny taunt to her fans and haters alike. It’s the song version of the infamous “I’ve never ever been happier” scene from Euphoria.
In ‘Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?’ she takes aim at the naysayers by reminding them that we all created the monster that is Taylor. She is who she is after a lifetime of criticisms of her appearance, her relationships, her singing, her attendance at football games, and of course, her music. We created the cutthroat, image obsessed, All-American Sweetheart and if we hate her that’s a mess of our own making.
There are some issues with Taylor’s argument in both songs because she has invited some level of scrutiny of her personal life and politics in her songs. But more important than whether Taylor is blind to her own culpability is how much these songs seem to resonate with women. The concert footage of ‘Who’s Afraid’ will show you legions of women screaming the lyrics in cathartic release. It’s the anger that comes from feeling the unfairness of being criticised for the jagged edges that this world gave you.
TTPD is a smorgasbord of emotions. The idea that Taylor hasn’t matured seems to forget that at all ages people can still become engulfed by their own feelings. It also misses the details that do show us that Taylor is singing from the perspective of someone in her mid-thirties. She now mourns the youth she’s ‘lost’ to a long-term relationship that ended. She expresses desires for marriage and children. She looks back on a relationship and understands what it has meant in the broader scheme of her life. These aren’t the same reflections of the teenaged girl who wrote ‘White Horse’.
Taylor is not a particularly strong singer, guitar player or dancer. What she does do well is storytelling. She crafts songs that are evocative and personal, and in the specifics her listeners find connections to their own lives. I play the songs on repeat trying to find validation for my own feelings and solace in the company of Taylor. ‘The Prophecy’ is my own fear that my fate is to be unloved and lonely forever. ‘Peter’ is the pain I felt when I realised that the promises someone made me will never be fulfilled. When I have a cry in the work bathroom then walk straight into a meeting I’m living my very own ‘I Can Do It With a Broken Heart’. I might laugh at the imagery of “crying at the gym” from ‘Down Bad’ but I’ve also cried in the chips aisle of Woolworths.
This is the secret to her enduring popularity. Taylor, despite being the biggest pop star in the world right now, is not an unreachable star like Beyonce or Rihanna. When you go to her concert, you feel like you’re at the biggest sleepover with your best friend (Taylor – not other concertgoers). She pulls faces, she trips, she’s dorky and a bit lame. She’s just like us, and in her songs she builds worlds that are tangible and familiar to the regular person.
In the wake of her chart success there has been an increasing focus on the tactics she uses to allegedly ‘inflate’ her popularity. Album variants come in all formats. The classic variant is the ‘deluxe’ edition of an album that will normally include a handful of extra tracks, voice notes, or demos. For chart accounting purposes, the sale of a variant is attributed to the original album. Variants have been an industry practice for many years now. Beyonce’s I am… Sasha Fierce had four variants, whilst Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts had 15 vinyl variants and a deluxe edition. Target exclusive will count as a variant. A remix album is a variant. Artists have even started releasing sped up and slowed down versions of their album.[3]
With TTPD, Taylor has taken to releasing exclusive digital variants that include one additional song – a demo of a TTPD track. She often, but not always, releases these when a real threat to her chart position emerges as a way to re-engage her fanbase. The most controversial instances have coincided with the release of Hit Me Hard and Soft and Brat.
It's absurd to think that Taylor is only able to maintain her top spot on the album charts because of the variants alone. TTPD has maintained its no. 1 on the Top Streaming Albums charts since release without the assistance of variants which do not contribute to streaming numbers. In its tenth week (when no variants were released), TTPD sold 115,000 equivalent album units, of which 75% of those units comes from streaming. Even without variants, 25% of her album units came from album sales. That same week, Brat sold 41,000 album units and Hit Me Hard and Soft sold 70,000. She is well ahead of her competitors and that’s two and half months after release.
On the UK charts, Taylor was accused of blocking Brat with UK digital exclusives. Taylor’s final units sold were 35,941, whilst Charli reached 27,234.[4] At a disaggregated level, the numbers reveal that the digital exclusives only contributed to around 1,000 of her album units. However, Taylor’s streams were slightly higher, likely due to the Eras Tour arriving the week prior in the UK, and signed CDs sold earlier were shipped to customers.[5] It is possible, even likely, that Brat was never going to take the no. 1 spot from Taylor. Nor did she need the variants to outpace Hit Me Hard and Soft.
This is a competition. She’s not in partnership or in collaboration with other artists. Never before have artists been told to concede their chart position for another artist. I don’t remember anyone asking SZA to let someone else in when SOS was dominating the charts. This is also not targeted at women either, there simply has been no major competition from a man since TTPD’s release. She has used similar tactics to frustrate releases from Drake and Bruno Mars in the past. Taylor is playing the same game as everyone else, she’s just better at it.
Moreover, that Taylor is able to sell a few thousand variants or signed CDs is just proof of her popularity. This is what the charts measure. They are an indicator of popularity not quality, and Eilish or Charli are simply not as popular as Taylor. In fact, given that every Taylor album except Debut is currently in the charts, it turns out people listen to a lot more Taylor than they do nearly every other artist. If you want to dethrone TTPD at the top of the charts, you simply have to be more popular. So far, no one else seems to have captured the attention of the general public in the same way. Whether you like it or not, Charli isn’t the zeitgeist, Eilish isn’t the zeitgeist. Taylor is. The numbers don’t lie.
Taylor’s success on the charts is only baffling if you can’t come to terms with the fact that her music speaks to a lot of people. They find her music fun, uplifting, moving, comforting, well-written, catchy, cathartic, and personal. It’s not for everyone but it is for her 98 million monthly Spotify users.
As I finish this post, the sun sets on a truly miserable day. My heart feels battered and bruised and the only music I can bear to listen to is TTPD’s ‘loml’ on repeat. Alongside Taylor, I comb through the braids of lies and wish I could un-recall the plans and the promises. As I bury further under my doona, surrounded by unfolded laundry and empty packets of snacks, I know that Taylor understands the embarrassment of being unable to get out of bed. I’m not listening to ‘loml’ because it’s an outstanding bit of songwriting but because its everything I’m feeling right now. No one else quite captures that and so I’m happy to hit repeat and give Taylor her 12th week on the charts.
[1] Commonly referred to as Debut.
[2] My own parasocial relationship won’t let me refer to her as Swift as convention would have me do. It almost feels disrespectful. I’ll save unpacking that for a future post.
[3] Eilish did so in an attempt to win the no. 1 spot the week Hit Me Hard and Soft debuted.
[4] The authenticity of these numbers is hard to verify. The numbers are allegedly ripped from industry spreadsheets and posted on internet forums just before the charts are publicly available. They do seem to match where the charts land.
[5] Charts count the shipment date of online CD sales as the date that they contribute to tracking weeks – not the date they are sold.