German swiftie

Debuting all 31 songs in the Top 50 of our Streaming Songs chart—six of those logging 40m+ streams—Taylor Swift's THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (Republic) has set a new record for most streams in a week.

Swift's 11th LP will earn 864 million streams in its first week, surpassing the previous record-holder, Drake's Scorpion (746m), by more than 100m. TTPD's first single, "Fortnight" f/Post Malone, opens at #1 on the chart with 65m streams—the most streams in a week for a song in 2024. The album has already done nearly 1.2 billion Spotify streams.

TTPD's record-setting stream count and physical sales numbers are likely to be somewhere between massive and ginormous. Stay tuned for the final HITS Top 50 projection later today.

I obviously am not a songwriter or artist but it’s fascinating to me how creating art is a cathartic process for confessional songwriters like Taylor. I would love to hear from her on is the contrast between only writing/making the song vs releasing it…. and if, over time, she’s maybe realized that the publication of the song is just as necessary as the writing phase for true healing. If true, this would explain why she needed not to just write ttpd, but also had share it with the world. Consequences be dammed.

The process of catharsis being:

First you write the song and you get all your feelings out and get the emotional release.

Step two, you share it with people, kind of like letting a balloon go up in the sky or a leaf float down a river. You send it off to have its own life. This part is a physical release.

Third step is people hear it and say “me too” and it’s validating and the writer and listener both feel seen. This is the (shared) release of the fear and self pity it was just you… and you have a connection and feel less alone. And after this step is when the true healing, and your emotional recovery begins and you can start to rejuvenate and recover.

She’s talked about this some on stage but I feel like it’s probably more complex than what I wrote and would be intrigued to hear how she views it

someone probably already said this but to me verse 1 of clara bow is about Taylor looking up to someone famous & wanting to be them so bad, in verse 2 I think she is talking about herself (the comparison to Stevie nicks, the crowd line) and the sacrifices she had to make to get to her position which ties in with the bridge in which she realizes that the life she dreamed of is not as dazzling as she thought it would be and how she struggles with it and then in the outro she's talking to the next generation of women coming after her who will be promised the same glory she was but they'll eventually discover that the industry relentlessly and eventually destroys all women trying to make it

TAYLOR SWIFT The Tortured Poets Department

He jokes “it’s heroin but this time with an E” goes sooooo deep I can’t even begin to describe

Imagine dating a dude who takes drugs, imagine feeling like you’re in a psych ward for years, thinking you want to die, losing people you love left and right and then this guy comes into your life who’s just pure sunshine and he makes you feel like all the things that happened to you didn’t damage you but instead make you a fucking hero

Love this, and we can take the metaphor further because it perfectly describes things: the prior guys blokes were like heroin, a deeply addictive drug that works like poison, first it gives you that high and it feels so good, but it slowly fades, and when it runs out you want more of it, instead of walking away. you just! keep! chasing that initial high! And you knew it was bad for you, you knew you were addicted to it and kept coming back, and yet still just couldn’t quit;

and now: you’re a heroin[e] ~ someone who is being celebrated and admired for her skills and bravery and seen as the champion of her own story

14 year old taylor swift writing the outside and 34 year old taylor writing i look in people's windows. im gonna be sick

— Dogpound's Kirk Myers to Vogue on training Taylor for the Eras Tour (x)

Clean (2014) // The Bolter (2024)

mrjoshcharles : I’ve admired Taylor for a long time, but meeting her in person took my fandom to a whole new level. Genuine, kind, approachable, and just an all around stellar human being - Not to mention a kick ass director to boot! #TSTTPD

Taylor Swift talking about 'Fortnight'

''It's the song that I think really exhibits a lot of common themes that run throughout this album. One of which being fatalism, um, longing, pining away lost dreams. You know, I think that, um, it's a very fatalistic album and that there are lots of very dramatic lines about life or death, and I love you it's ruining my life, like, these are very hyperbolic dramatic things to say but it's that kind of album. It's about a dramatic, artistic, tragic kind of take on love and loss, and Fortnight, I've always imagined that it took place in this American town where the American dream you thought would happen to you didn't. You ended up not with the person that you loved and now you have to just live with that everyday wondering what would have been, maybe seeing about and that's a pretty tragic concept, really. So I was just writing from that perspective.''

📸: Via shesjustlosingit on TikTok

Taylor Swift talking about her song 'Down Bad'

''A lot of the songs on TTPD deal with the idea of heartbreak or loss in a metaphor of something else. The metaphor in 'Down Bad' is that I was comparing the idea of being love bombed, where someone rocks your world and dazzles you and then just kind of abandons you as a alien obduction where you were abducted by aliens, like, this girl is abducted by aliens, but she wanted to stay with them.. and when they drop her off back in her hometown she said 'wait, no, where are you going? I liked it there. It was weird, but it was cool, come back..' and so the girl, the character in the song, felt like, I've just been exposed to a whole different galaxy and universe I didn't know was possible. How can you just put me back where I was before?''

📸 Via shesjustlosingit on TikTok

When I was writing the Fortnight music video, I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music.  Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another. For me, this video turned out to be the perfect visual representation of this record and the stories I tell in it. Post Malone blew me away on set as our tortured tragic hero and I’m so grateful to him for everything he put into this collaboration. I’m still laughing from getting to work with the coolest guys on earth, Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles (tortured poets, meet your colleagues from down the hall, the dead poets). I still can’t believe I get to work with the unfathomably brilliant Rodrigo Prieto on cinematography and my team of dream collaborators: Ethan Tobman (production design), Chancler Haynes (editor), Anthony Dimino (1st AD), Jil Hardin (producer) and Dom Thomas (executive producer). Parliament aced the VFX as always. Joseph Cassell, Lorrie Turk and Jemma Muradian made these tortured looks come to life. The entire crew made this a dream to shoot. Thank you to everyone involved and everyone who has watched it!! https://taylor.lnk.to/FortnightMV

The 'Fortnight' music video is out now on YouTube!