Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ may have leaked—but it’s already breaking records
Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ may have leaked—but it’s already breaking records
Many Swifties refused to listen to leaked tracks circulating on social media. Meanwhile, Spotify says the album has already hit a big milestone.
BY Chris Morris
The Tortured Poets Department saw a big membership boost Wednesday night as the much-anticipated new album by Taylor Swift allegedly leaked online. While Swift and her label have not commented on whether the files were legitimate, clips of that audio that were posted to X (formerly Twitter) have been taken down due to copyright violations.
For most artists, that sort of piracy could potentially do significant harm to sales, but Swift operates on a level where she makes her own rules. Ignoring the alleged leak, she instead posted Thursday afternoon that the album’s first single would be “Fortnight,” featuring Post Malone. (The video will drop at 8:00 p.m. ET on Friday.)
While the leak, if it’s real, may have irked Swift, it’s unlikely to affect sales in any substantial way. That’s due to a few factors, but none more than the dedication of her fan base. Swifties have rallied to defend the singer on social media, eschewing the leak and opting instead to wait for the official midnight Friday drop of the album.
Swifties are most likely to trek out to stores to buy a physical copy of the album or to download it (legally) from digital storefronts. And, as ticket sales for her Eras Tour have shown, Swift’s fans are legion.
Spotify, meanwhile, reported Thursday that The Tortured Poets Department has become the most pre-saved album Countdown Page in the company’s history.
That’s setting the album up to break records, which (ironically) were set by Swift last October with the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version). In its first week, that album topped Billboard’s charts with 1.653 million units (a combination of sales and streaming figures). Prior to that, the biggest debut of the 2020s was her Midnights, boasting 1.578 million units, which displaced, yep, another Swift record—folklore (with 846,000 units).
Should the new album set new records, it will do so despite Swift opting not to release a single or video in advance of its debut, a highly unusual tactic for most artists (but, again, we’re talking about Taylor Swift here). Instead, Swift made a high-profile announcement at the Grammys that the album was on its way and has continued her Eras Tour (with a European leg kicking off in Paris on May 9, before returning to the U.S. on October 18).
She has also leaned into using her older music to promote the new collections of songs. She coordinated with SiriusXM to launch a Taylor Swift channel (Channel 13, natch), and while Universal Music Group (her label) is still not allowing music from its artists to be used on TikTok as those companies battle over compensation, Swift’s songs reappeared on the social media app one week ago, with selections including “You Belong With Me” and “Cruel Summer” once again available for users to incorporate into their videos.
(None of the parties has commented, but many assume that Swift reached a separate deal with TikTok, as she owns her masters.)
So, while a leak might have some slight impact on the first week (and overall) sales numbers, the excitement over Swift’s first collection of new songs in two years is, at this point, largely unstoppable. Tom Poleman, chief programming officer for iHeartRadio, might have summed it up best, telling CNN that The Tortured Poets Department is “probably the most anticipated album ever that I’ve seen in my career. . . . I think she’s going to break the internet.”
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