A new Spotify record… Patti Smith reacts to being namechecked on ‘The Tortured Poets Department’… And a London pub is trying to keep up… Here’s the latest in TayTay’s world.

Taylor Swift has a new album out, so you can bet records are already being broken…

Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department‘ has broken the record for Spotify’s most-streamed in a single day, according to the platform. It has become the first album in Spotify history to reach more than 300 million streams – in one day.

Spotify wrote on X: “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.”

Previously, the record was held by her re-recorded version of ‘1989’.

 

That’s not all – the first single from the album, ‘Fortnight’ featuring Post Malone,  also became Spotify’s most streamed song in a single day.

On social media Post Malone said: “It’s once in a lifetime that someone like @taylorswift13 comes into this world. I am floored by your heart and your mind, and I am beyond honoured to have been asked to help you with your journey I love you so much. Thank you Tay.”

 

Taylor Swift’s 11th album dropped on Friday 19 April at midnight, as a stealth double album.

The first 16 tracks were released as scheduled, but just a few hours later, an additional 15 tracks dropped, delighting Swifties the the world over – and giving reviewers the daunting task of suddenly doubling their workload.

Swift said the album was an anthology of new works reflecting “events, opinions and sentiments from a fleeting and fatalistic moment in time – one that was both sensational and sorrowful in equal measure”.

She went on to say that that period in her life “now over”.

“The chapter closed and boarded up. There is nothing to avenge, no scores to settle once wounds have healed,” she said. “Once we have spoken our saddest story, we can be free of it.”

In Euronews Culture’s review of the album, we said: “Sonically, it’s not a leap forward or even a stylistic shift; lyrically, however, there’s messy fun to be had. (…) Taylor dips into the formulaic on certain tracks in her uneven but entrancing post-mortem on love and its pitfalls.” Read the full review here.

Patti Smith responds to a shout-out

One of the songs we were particularly fond of is the titular track, which features some great lyrical moments, especially the delightful line: “You’re not Dylan Thomas / I’m not Patti Smith / This ain’t the Chelsea hotel / We’re modern idiots”.

Patti Smith took notice and has responded to Taylor Swift inserting her name into the song, which seemingly refers to Swift’s short-lived relationship with The 1975’s Matty Healy.

Smith took to social media and posted a photo of her reading Thomas.

“This is saying I was moved to be mentioned in the company of the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Thank you Taylor.”

Why are Swifties rushing to the pub?

Elsewhere, another album shout-out has had an unexpected side effect, as hundreds of Taylor Swift fans have swarmed a London pub after Swift mentioned The Black Dog in Vauxhall, South London.

In the song of the same name, Swift sings: “And your location, you forgot to turn it off / And so I watch as you walk / Into some bar called The Black Dog / And pierce new holes in my heart.”

That song is thought to address her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, who lives in the same area as the pub.

“This is the Taylor Swift Effect – anything she touches goes viral,” Amy Cowley, who works at the pub, told British newspaper the Standard. “We’re super excited. It was a great atmosphere last night with the fans.”

“We’re not sure if she visited. She might have done – we wouldn’t even know. It’s a possibility but it’s great to keep her fans in suspense.”

To celebrate their newfound fame, the pub is running an offer of a free ‘Swift Half’ of their house lager for anyone who comes in and quotes a lyric from a Taylor song.

“We have members of the team who are big Swifties,” Cowley continued. “On Friday, everyone got a swift half of our Black Dog lager and we’re running that for the next week with food purchases.”

However, and somewhat unsurprisingly, the numbers soon got out of hand.

“People had to be turned away, we didn’t have capacity,” Cowley stated. “It was really rammed. Obviously, we’re in planning mode now because of her upcoming Wembley shows.”