Taylor Swift’s new album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ broke a Spotify record after racking up more than 300 million streams on Friday (19.04.24).
The pop superstar’s 11th studio record became the platform’s most streamed album in a single day after bringing in huge numbers in its first 24 hours and she now holds Spotify’s top three most streamed debuts with her 2022 album ‘Midnights’ in second and her rerecorded ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ in third.
A statement from Spotify posted on X – formerly known as Twitter – declared: “History made! On April 19, 2024, Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ was the first album in Spotify history to have over 300M streams in a single day.”
She also broke the platform’s record for the most-streamed song in one day with the album’s lead single ‘Fortnight’ which features Post Malone. The song broke the record previously set by Adele’s ‘Easy on Me’ back in 2021.
Swift was also the most streamed artist in a single day in Spotify history on Friday (19.04.24) after previously managing the same feat in October when she released ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’.
‘The Tortured Poets Department’ was released at midnight on Friday (19.04.24) and just hours later, the singer dropped a bombshell by announcing she was adding a second instalment of 15 extra songs to make it an “Anthology”.
In a post on social media, Swift wrote: “It’s a 2am surprise: ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is a secret DOUBLE album. “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of ‘TTPD: The Anthology’. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore … it’s all yours.”
The extra release means the album now clocks in at 31 songs including ‘The Manuscript’, ‘The Bolter’, The Albatross’ and ‘The Black Dog’ which were the bonus tracks included on vinyl versions of the record.
Swift went on to explain the double album reflects a period of her life that’s “now over” and she insisted she has “no scores to settle once wounds have healed” – with many speculating many of the songs explore her doomed relationship with actor Joe Alwyn and her brief romance with Matty Healy.
In a post on Instagram, she wrote: “‘The Tortured Poets Department’. An anthology of new works that reflect events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure. “This period of the author’s life is now over, the chapter closed and boarded up.
“There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed. And upon further reflection, a good number of them turned out to be self-inflicted.
“This writer is of the firm belief that our tears become holy in the form of ink on a page. Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it. And then all that’s left behind is the tortured poetry.”