Is anyone going to stop Taylor Swift? His new album, The Tortured Poets Departmentsold 2.6 million copies in its first week last month, earning her her eighth No. 1 album on Billboard since 2020. At the Grammy Awards in February, she became the first artist to win album of the year for fourth time, breaking a tie with Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon.
The Eras Tour, which brought her to Buenos Aires in 2023, brought her billions of dollars. And, according to the Luminate data service, one in every 78 songs streamed belongs to it.
At 34 years old, the article signed by Joe Coscarelli maintains, Swift has created such momentum that she is probably more popular (more ubiquitous) than ever after 19 years of her professional music career.
But how big is Taylor Swift in terms of the all-time pop pantheon? The singer’s continued rise has inspired inevitable debates about how her success compares not only to that of her pop peers, such as Beyoncé and Drake, but also to the greats who came before them. Even Billy Joel said that he could only compare this Swift moment to Beatlemania.
It may be impossible to make an exact, one-to-one comparison between Swift’s career and that of the Beatles, or Madonna, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John or your icon of choice. In addition to music being personal and subjective, the nature of success (and how it is calculated) has changed dramatically over time. Much of a star’s control over the zeitgeist is also intangible: a vibe in the air, her influence moving subtly but undeniably through the culture.
But the absence of a truly scientific comparison has never stopped the fun that comes from the eternal sports and pop culture debates of our time: Star Wars versus Star Trek (o Harry Potterthe Marvel Universe).
Even without definitive conclusions, it’s impossible for certain loyalists, haters, and obsessives not to wonder how the giants compare using whatever evidence is available.
Seven years into her career, she left her Nashville sound behind and collaborated with pop guru Max Martin, who trails only John Lennon and Paul McCartney with 25 number one hits in his songwriting career.
It’s also worth noting that an album’s “sale” now means something different: a given number of song streams or downloads is considered the equivalent of one album sold.
Swift, whose new album includes 31 songs, each of which reached the Hot 100, has dominated with these new metrics: In 2022, she became the first artist to occupy the entire Top 10 of the Hot 100 at once upon release from Midnights.
She repeated and expanded on that feat last month with songs by The Tortured Poets Department, which filled the top 14 spots on the singles chart.
With these figures, it could hope to get close to those of Swift’s most important albums so far, which are Fearlesswhich is officially 10 times platinum, and 1989nine times platinum.
This might measure a different kind of fervor than the musical ubiquity of the Beatles or others who later dominated radio: a deep obsession with Swift’s fans who listen to her music billions of times and buy it in multiple formats.