TAYLOR SWIFT'S NEW ALBUM, The Tortured Poets Department, is not one of her best. Critics have complained about its exhausting length (31 songs, two hours), subdued tone and lyrical wound-rubbing. Her decision to announce it at the Grammy awards, months before its release on 19 April, was widely seen as tacky, snatching the media spotlight from other winners.
For any other artist, this might be a perilous moment of bubble-bursting hubris, but 34-yearold Taylor Alison Swift is not any other artist. The album set a streaming record on Spotify-300m in one day and ibn in five-and made her the first artist in history to secure the top 14 spots on the Billboard Hot 100. In the US, it sold 2.6m copies in the first week, second only to Adele's 3.4m nine years ago, with 859,000 on vinyl alone.
Swift is a formidable singer-songwriter, but these days she is as likely to feature in the business pages as the music pages. Last October, off the back of the first leg of her Eras tour, she was declared a billionaire - the first person to pass that milestone through music-related earnings alone rather than other investments. Eras became the first billion-dollar tour in history, selling 2.4m tickets in a single day. Forbes estimated she was earning $10m-$13m a night. And the tour movie is the highest grossing of all time, at $262m.
"The Eras tour turned out to be a juggernaut that even she couldn't have anticipated," says Carl Wilson, pop critic for Slate. "I can't remember another phenomenon like it in live music."
As the tour made its way across North America, local economies boomed, with fans spending an average of $1,325, including travel, accommodation, food and drink. The UK leg is predicted to boost the economy by £1bn ($1.27bn), while Singapore outbid rival nations to ensure it was the only Swift-blessed country in south-east Asia. Media fascination with the tour has given birth to a new word, Swiftonomics, and university courses devoted to it.
Denne historien er fra June 07, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra June 07, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Friendship interrupted
They were best mates. Then one had a baby, while the other struggled to conceive. They share their brutally honest takes on what happens when motherhood affects friendship
KERNELS OF HOPE
During the siege of Leningrad, botanists in charge of an irreplaceable seed collection, the first of its kind, had to protect it from fire, rodents-and hunger
A new horizon' The inverse link between cancer and dementia
Scientists have long been aware of a curious connection between these common and feared diseases. At last, a clearer picture is emerging
Across the universe
Samantha Harvey won the Booker prize with a novel set in space. Yet, she says, Orbital is actually 'a celebration of Earth's beauty with a pang of loss'
Frank Auerbach 1931 -2024
Saved from the Holocaust, this artist captured the devastation of postwar Britain as ifits wounds were his own but he ultimately found salvation in painting
Seven lessons I've learned after 28 years as economics editor
Margaret Thatcher was Britain's prime minister and Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour party.
Droughtstricken dam leaves economies powerless
A ll is not well with the waters of Lake Kariba, the world's human-made lake largest A punishing drought has drained the huge reservoir close to record lows, raising the prospect that the Kariba Dam, which powers the economies of Zambia and Zimbabwe, may have to shut down for the first time in its 65-year history.
Let this be the end of these excruciating celebrity endorsements
I wish celebrities would learn the art of the French exit. But they can't, which is why Eva Longoria has announced she no longer lives in America. \"I get to escape and go somewhere,\" she explained.
Alive, but unable to thrive under absolute patriarchy
Since the Taliban returned to power, women and girls have tried defiance, but despair at their harshly restricted lives
‘It's tragic’ Reflection in the wake of Amsterdam violence
Carrying signs scrawled with messages urging unity, they laid white roses at the statue of Anne Frank, steps away from the home where her family had hidden from Nazi persecution.
