Taylor has secured a Billboard first, currently occupying every spot in the Top 10 in the Hot 100 chart for songs. According to Billboard, Taylor Swift Makes History as First Artist with Entire Top 10 on Billboard Hot 100, Led by 'Anti-Hero' at number one. The record was previously held by US rapper Drake, who had nine of the top 10 songs for a week in September, 2021.
Taylor tweeted: "10 out of 10 of the Hot 100??? On my 10th album??? I AM IN SHAMBLES."
All of the songs are from the popstar's latest album Midnights, which was released in October. The number one spot on the Billboard chart belongs to Anti-Hero, whose lyrics quickly became a TikTok trend, marking her ninth career number one.
The other songs to make the top 10 were Lavender Haze, Maroon, Snow on The Beach, Midnight Rain, Bejeweled, Question...? You're On Your Own, Kid, Karma and Vigilante S***. She had worked and written most of the album with her long-time collaborator, Jack Antonoff, lead singer of rock band Bleachers.
Taylor Alison Swift, born December 13, 1989 in West Reading, Pennsylvania, US, showed interest in music at an early age. At the age of 14, her first single, ‘Tim McGraw’, was released in the summer of 2006. It was inspired by her favourite country artist, Tim McGraw. The song was an immediate success, spending eight months on the Billboard country singles chart.
In 2007, she emerged as Country Music's most visible young start as she received the Horizon Award for best new artist from the Country Music Association (CMA). After embarking on her first tour as a headliner in 2009, her Fearless album was recognized by the Academy of Country Music as album of the year.
The same year, she was recognized as CMA entertainer of the year, making her the first female solo artist to win it since 1999 and the youngest person to ever win the award.
Swift set a number of new records with ‘Midnight’ right from the point of release. When the album was first released, it broke global Spotify records for the most streams of a single album in one day.
This made the American singer-songwriter to thank her fans for "doing something mind-blowing". Reacting to the news, she wrote: "How did I get this lucky, having you guys out here doing something this mind blowing?!" "Like what even just happened?!"
‘Midnight’ had the biggest first week of sales of any album this year. The album racked up to 204,000 chart sales in seven days. That is more than double of her previous best of 90,300, which she achieved with her album 1989, released in 2014. It almost doubles the numbers of the previous title-holder, ‘Harry’s House’, the third solo album by Harry Styles.
It was also the most streamed album of the year, with 72.5 million streams over the first seven days, again beating Harry Styles' 53.9m.
Swift beat Madonna to set a new all-time UK chart record for the fastest succession of nine UK number one albums of any female artist, thereby overtaking Madonna. Currently, Swift is the female artist with the most charted songs in the United States. With a total number of 188 chart entries on the US Billboard Hot 100 (including 9 number ones and a total of 40 top tens). Madonna, however, still has the record for the most UK number one albums of any solo female artist, with 12 overall. This puts Swift as second on the list, and Kylie Minogue in the third place.
Her last two studio albums, her eighth Folklore and her ninth Evermore, were both released during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and signalled her move towards folk and alternative music, having collaborated on the albums with the National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. After release, Folklore became the best-selling album in the United States in 2020.
The award-winning singer broke a record set more than 50 years ago by the Beatles for the fastest accumulation of three number one albums in the UK. Her albums, Fearless (Taylor's Version), Folklore and Evermore all hit the number one in only 259 days, beating the record of 364 days set by the Beatles between 1965 and 1966.
She dropped both ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ and ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ in 2021, following a dispute with Big Machine over the rights to masters of her six studio albums. And in November, announced her next world tour, which will no doubt see eager fans scramble for tickets to the ‘Taylor Swift - The Eras Tour’.
