Taylor Swift Aimed for a truly epic release long before The Tortured Poets Department was actually canceled, surprising fans
Taylor Swift was gunning for a truly epic release week long before The Tortured Poets Department actually dropped, with the pop star surprising fans by unleashing 31 new songs — as opposed to the previously confirmed 16 main and four bonus tracks — in the span of two hours April 19.
She’d been crafting the sprawling, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner-produced project for about two years before it finally arrived, with the singer telling fans at a February Eras Tour show that she’d been working on it since the moment she submitted the Billboard 200-topping Midnights to her label some time in 2022. The unavoidable news cycle about her breakups from longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn and The 1975’s Matty Healy, as well as her blossoming romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, only added fuel to the fire of hype leading up to Tortured Poets, which Swift further stoked by saying at another Eras concert, “I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more.”
Come April 19, and her inimitable lyricism, discourse-provoking songwriting and apparent allusions to the aforementioned relationships proved to be more than enough to make millions of listeners tune in, the 14-time Grammy winner smashing records left and right in the process. Before Tortured Poets even hit the Billboard charts, it was doing unprecedented numbers in streaming, sales and vinyl — not to mention selling 1.4 million copies in its first day on the market, according to Luminate — giving Swift’s peers a run for their money in more ways than one.Keep reading to see all of the major records The Tortured Poets Department has broken — so far — below.
Spotify’s Most Pre-Saved Countdown
Before Tortured Poets was even released, its countdown page on Spotify broke the streaming service’s record for most pre-saves in history. The countdown launched on March 28, two weeks ahead of the album’s release date, inviting Swifties to watch as each second ticked down.
Spotify also continuously updated the tab with links to the pop star’s merch as well as cryptic videos of Swift printing lyrics from the LP with a typewriter.
Spotify’s Most Pre-Saved Countdown
Before Tortured Poets was even released, its countdown page on Spotify broke the streaming service’s record for most pre-saves in history. The countdown launched on March 28, two weeks ahead of the album’s release date, inviting Swifties to watch as each second ticked down.
Spotify also continuously updated the tab with links to the pop star’s merch as well as cryptic videos of Swift printing lyrics from the LP with a typewriter.
Single-Week Vinyl Sales![]()
Of Tortured Poets 1.5 million first-week sales, 700,000 of those copies were vinyl. That breaks Swift’s own record for the largest sales week for an album on vinyl in the modern era, or since Luminate began tracking data in 1991, beating the 693,000 sold of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in its first week in 2023.
Prior to its release, Tay announced four vinyl variants of Tortured Poets — “The Manuscript,” “The Albatross,” “The Bolter” and “The Black Dog” — each containing the 16 songs on the album’s main tracklist plus one bonus song.
Single-Day Spotify Album Streams
Not only did Tortured Poets become Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day in history in less than 12 hours after its release, it also became the first album on the platform to amass more than 300 million streams in a single day ever.
The streaming service’s previous single-day record-holder was Beyoncé, whose Cowboy Carter garnered 300.41 million on-demand official streams in its first full week of release.
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.
— Spotify (@Spotify) April 20, 2024
