This week’s Five Burning Questions looks at Swift’s latest blockbuster opening, and how much bigger she can still get from here.

Taylor SwiftBeth Garrabrant

It’s zero shock that Taylor Swift finishes her first frame for new album The Tortured Poets Department with a massive number: After all, she already boasted the decade’s two biggest debuts, for 2022’s Midnights (1.578 million equivalent album units) and 2023’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (1.653 million units), and has only kept getting bigger in the months since those releases. Still, the exact opening number for Poets is staggering: 2.61 million units, according to Luminate, more than any album since Adele’s 25 bowed with 3.48 million in late 2015.

The 16-track set — which Swift expanded to 31 with its Anthology edition — also debuts all of its songs on the Billboard Hot 100, while occupying each of the chart’s top 14 slots. The Hot 100 takeover is led by the album’s leadoff cut, the Post Malone collab “Fortnight,” which becomes Swift’s 12th No. 1 on the chart. Despite all its early commercial achievements, the album’s critical reception has been more mixed to start, with many criticizing the set’s length and repetitiveness.

 

How did the album achieve its eye-popping first-week numbers? And will Swift’s album releases likely get smaller or even bigger from here? Billboard staffers debate these questions and more below.

1. The final first-week number for The Tortured Poets Department is 2.6 million, easily the best number of Swift’s career and the finest single-week tally since Adele’s 25 nearly a decade ago. Is that number higher, lower or about what you expected for the TTPD debut?

Hannah Dailey: I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted that the number would be so insanely high, but I did expect that TTPD would earn Swift her biggest opening week yet. It’s well established that the pop star’s spotlight has never been brighter than in the past year, thanks to the Eras Tour, her high-profile breakups from Joe Alwyn and Matty Healy and even higher-profile romance with Travis Kelce, as well as the chart/awards success of Midnights — so it was a given that more people than ever would be tuning in.

Stephen Daw: It feels strange to say that record-breaking numbers felt “expected,” but this is Taylor Swift we’re talking about. With every subsequent release — which seem to be coming more and more frequently for the singer/songwriter — she manages to break the records that she set with her last release, so it stands to reason that Tortured Poets would manage to best her Midnights and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) sales numbers.

 

Kyle Denis: Around what I expected. Swift is undeniably at her commercial peak right now, and she was able to leverage the breadth of that power with gargantuan 31-song tracklist and 19 different variants of the album.

Jason Lipshutz: Much higher. Considering the expectations-shattering run that Taylor Swift is on right now, I shouldn’t be surprised that The Tortured Poets Department scored the biggest bow of the 2020s with ease… but still, 2 million is a stratosphere that not even Swift herself has approached in the past, let alone an additional 600,000 units on top of that. I mean, TTPD blew the Midnights debut out of the water — and Midnights really wasn’t that long ago? This No. 1 feat demonstrates just how much higher Swift’s superstardom has climbed recently, her music becoming a monoculture unto itself that everybody needs to check out or purchase.

Andrew Unterberger: Yeah higher. Over two million felt realistic, but I still thought it would be more of a peeking-its-head-over-two-million figure than one actually even closer to three million. It wasn’t even two years ago we were legitimately wondering whether another one-million-unit first week would happen again this decade; for Swift to come within shouting range of triple that is pretty wild.

2. What would you point to as being the biggest factor in Swift not only beating the already-historic first-week tallies of Midnights and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) with her TTPD debut, but clearing both by around a million units each?

Hannah Dailey: I think TTPD would have blown Midnights and 1989 out of the water no matter what, if nothing else because of how excited fans and haters alike were to scour the new lyrics for clues about her mystifying private life and famous love interests. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Swift’s surprise double album announcement is what sent the project over the two-million mark, inciting some listeners to purchase twice as many copies as they would have otherwise. She’s playing the numbers game, and she’s winning.

 

Stephen Daw: The short answer is the fact that the album was made available in more than 20 different formats certainly helped that Swift reach that astronomical figure. The much longer answer is that timing played a very key factor here. Between the ongoing Eras Tour and her extremely high-profile celebrity romance, Taylor Swift is currently dominating cultural discussions across the wide spectrum of what we consider entertainment. Fan interest in all things Taylor Swift has never been higher, and from the moment she announced Tortured Poets at the Grammys, Swifties have remained in a near-constant state of frenzy over the album’s release. To me, there was no world in which this album wouldn’t beat Midnights and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) by some ridiculous margin.

Kyle Denis: This is Swift’s first LP of all-new material since kicking off the Eras Tour. Since the record-breaking tour began – and her subsequent high-profile relationships with Matty Healy and Travis Kelce – she’s had her star grow even bigger, as impossible as that might have seemed. Her celebrity, brand and audience reach are bigger than ever – and she was already operating at pop music’s pole position before any of that.

As an album, Tortured Poets is also acutely aware of how deeply it delves into nearly two decades of Taylor Swift lore at a level that, a lot of the time, only die-hard fans understand. While the growth of her celebrity broadened her general reach, the material on Tortured Poets intensified how fans interacted with the album – whether that be countless listens on a streaming site or multiple purchases of the album’s different configurations to ensure every last song is in their possession.

Jason Lipshutz: The biggest tangible factor is probably the length of the album — more than twice as long as Midnights, which was always going to boost the TTPD streaming totals by comparison. Yet the most important factor here is intangible: Swift is just so much more enormous now than she was even 18 months ago — thanks in large part to the record-shattering Eras tour, as well as all of the success she’s achieved with her recent re-recorded albums, plus “Cruel Summer” becoming one of the biggest hits of 2023 after being released four years prior. Simply put, the numbers keep ballooning because Swift’s dominance in popular music keeps growing. Forget the track list length, vinyl production and romantic-drama intrigue; no matter how this album came out, it was likely becoming the biggest debut of Swift’s career.

 

Andrew Unterberger: It’s timing and planning. Any Swift album would have done massive numbers released a year after she set the new standard for contemporary pop superstardom, and the same year that she dominated both music’s biggest night and sports’ biggest night in consecutive weekends. But 31 tracks and nearly as many physical variants also helps, certainly.

3. “Fortnight” leads the pack for Swift on the Hot 100 with its No. 1 debut, but she owns each of the 13 spots beneath it with TTPD tracks as well. Do you see “Fortnight” as a long-lasting hit from this album — and which of the other tracks do you think has the best chance of challenging it as the set’s biggest hit?

Hannah Dailey: Two years ago, I thought that “Anti-Hero” would fall from No. 1 after its first week on the chart. It ended up staying there for eight weeks. So, this time, I’m going to trust Swift’s instincts, if not my own, and say that “Fortnight” is smash hit potential and will indeed remain at the top for a while. But if another song were to give it a run for its money, it would be “Down Bad” or “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” — both of which debuted in the top 3 and have boundless opportunities for TikTok virality.

Stephen Daw: Of the songs off TTPD, “Fortnight” feels like one that will stick around for a while — Taylor and Posty sound great together, and the song’s mid-tempo, atmospheric feel brings something a little bit different to pop radio. But I feel fairly confident that “Down Bad” will end up being the breakout hit from TTPD. It’s got the pure pop sensibility of 1989, the seething pettiness of Reputation and the more laid-back sensibilities of Folklore and Evermore. A seamless blend of the things fans are looking for in a Taylor Swift hit, “Down Bad” can only go up from here.

 

Kyle Denis: I think “Fortnight” will stick around for a bit, but I doubt it truly follows in the footsteps of “Anti-Hero.” With “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” already going viral on TikTok, there’s hit potential there. I’d also put my money on “Down Bad” and “But Daddy I Love Him” to make something shake.

Jason Lipshutz: Maybe it won’t replace “Anti-Hero” as her longest-lasting Hot 100 No. 1 hit, but yes, “Fortnight” is positioned for a lengthy run at or near the top of the Hot 100, with strong harmonic chemistry between Swift and Post Malone and a hook that sneaks up on the listener after fully blooming in the back half of the song. It’s the most obvious single choice from TTPD to me, although I do think “Down Bad” is going to have a pronounced commercial moment — let’s get that tear-soaked gym-set music video rolling ASAP.

Andrew Unterberger: “Fortnight” sounds like a smash to me, but it will not be able to simply dominate the Hot 100 for months (or even multiple weeks) by default like it might have in years past — not with rising hits from Sabrina Carpenter, Shaboozey and Tommy Richman already nipping at its heels, and not with a world-stopping Kendrick Lamar diss record entering the fray today as well. It will need to maintain momentum at streaming while growing rapidly at radio — something it certainly has the potential to do, but which we can’t necessarily assume, even from Taylor Swift’s new single.

If it fades, I could see “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” passing it. The fact that “Heart” debuts at No. 3 on the Hot 100 despite appearing 14th in the album’s tracklist shows that fans are already isolating it as a favorite from the project in huge numbers.

4. While the commercial response to TTPD has of course been overwhelming, the critic and fan response has been a little more mixed this time around for Swift, with many citing a lack of quality control among the set’s 16 tracks (31 in the deluxe Anthology version). Do you think the mixed response will have any impact on Swift’s ever-growing superstardom, or will her unprecedented rise just continue upwards from here?

 

Hannah Dailey: I wouldn’t be surprised if positive public opinion about Swift ebbs a little bit after TTPD, but her superstardom will be just fine. It doesn’t matter if people are saying good or bad things about her; as long as they continue discussing her at length in any capacity, she’ll stay at the forefront of pop culture and find even more ways to use that discourse to springboard herself to previously unheard-of heights.

But, if quality control of her image as an artist – and not just a celebrity — is important to her, then she may want to take criticisms about quality control in her music seriously. TTPD is very good. But just imagine what she could make alongside a few new collaborators with fresh perspectives and a less heavy-handed approach, one that forces her to leave room only for her bestest ideas.

Stephen Daw: How does one stop a runaway train? Especially with the way that some of Swift’s fans have been mercilessly going after music critics for doing their jobs over the last two weeks, I think it’s fair to say that her stardom isn’t cooling down any time soon. With a two more re-recordings still due to come from Taylor, as well as the European dates of her Eras Tour, Taylor is not in any danger of losing relevance for the foreseeable future.

Kyle Denis: Everyone and everything hits a ceiling, and Swift might be approaching hers. I think the mixed response can be easily mitigated by a new re-recording – the circumstances are certainly starting to align for Reputation (Taylor’s Version) — or a new album with more quality control and a new sound. Nonetheless, I do think the mixed reactions are slightly indicative of Taylor fatigue across the board. The Swifties will always be there, but I can see a scenario in which casual listeners feel less inclined to check in post-Tortured Poets.

 

Jason Lipshutz: Following a little more than a week of discourse, it’s even more clear to me that TTPD is going to function like the 2020s version of Reputation — mainstream listeners will continue to be polarized, but Swift diehards will wrap their arms around it as an idiosyncratic opus that captures their favorite superstar’s psyche, messy sprawl of the track list and all. In the same way that Reputation didn’t slow down Swift’s commercial enormity one bit, TTPD is a behemoth that also feels like a personalized note to the most attentive fans, a combination that will keep Swift growing ever still.

Andrew Unterberger: I think it’s not so much about the quality of TTPD and its dozens of tracks as it as about the sheer amount of Swift we’ve been inundated with the past four years — not just in the pop-culture ubiquity sense, but in the mind-boggling volume of new tracks she’s released over that time. A little time and distance will be kinder to a lot of these songs, and certainly it’s not like folks are gonna be likely to brush off new Swift music anytime soon, but it still might be a good idea for her to chill on the new releases (or at least downscale ’em a little bit) for the next couple years or so.

5. Adele’s 25 moved 3.48 units in its first week — a still mind-boggling number that many of us thought would never even be approached again. Swift has gotten closer than many would have expected, but she still has a decent gap to make up. What percentage chance would you give her of passing Adele’s seemingly unreachable first week at some point in her career?

Hannah Dailey: We’ve all learned not to underestimate Taylor Swift, but at the same time, I feel like TTPD would’ve been the album to surpass 25 if Swift had it in her. So for now, I’ll give her 50%. You never know, especially with her.

 

Stephen Daw: I’m going to be conservative and say it’s a 50/50 tossup. If anyone is going to manage to beat Adele, it will be Taylor Swift — but if the immediate, ridiculous sales numbers of TTPD aren’t able to stack up to 25, then it’s hard to imagine a future Taylor Swift album that could.

Kyle Denis: Above 50%. Taylor’s a consistent seller and smart businesswoman, it’s really all about timing with her. It’s possible that, with a longer pre-order window and Scorpion-esque playlist takeovers, Tortured Poets could have come closer to 25’s numbers. That said, something tells me that if she was ever going to pass 3.48 million units in the first week, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and Tortured Poets were her best bets.

Jason Lipshutz: 3%. Never say never, but that number just looks too far out of reach for modern music consumption. At the very least, that number gives Swift something to aim for when the TTPD follow-up arrives.

Andrew Unterberger: Maybe 25%. This does feel like it was her best shot, but Swift didn’t get to where she is by accepting “close but not quite,” so I imagine she’ll continue trying for it. 2.6 million isn’t a world removed from 3.5 million, though it’s still far enough that it’s not a gap to be bridged with a couple more vinyl variants or another bonus disc of leftover cuts. I don’t know how she might do it, but I do know that I wouldn’t feel comfortable betting against her doing so.