With her latest album “Midnights” selling an astounding 1.5 million copies in its first week, Taylor Swift was bound to dominate the Billboard Hot 100 chart — and that’s exactly what she did. Per Billboard, the “Anti-Hero” singer has seen her entire album chart in the Top 50 list, with ten of those songs occupying the top 10 spots.
It’s the first time in history that an artist has achieved this feat, but there appear to be plenty of more accolades to follow suit as “Midnights” continues to subjugate iTunes and Spotify charts. Furthermore, the first-week sales of Swift’s newest project make her the only artist in history to sell at least a million copies in a single week on five different occasions (five albums).
.@taylorswift13 officially becomes the first artist in history to occupy the entire top 10 of the #Hot100 simultaneously, thanks to the opening week of ‘Midnights.’
“Anti-Hero” debuts at No. 1, becoming Swift’s 9th career No. 1 hit and the 5th No. 1 debut.
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) October 31, 2022
And if that wasn’t enough, Swift has also secured herself the third-largest streaming week for an album, accumulating over 545 million streams in its first seven days after release. While some would argue that people don’t buy albums the way that they used to, Swift’s fans would clearly disagree.
Despite the album’s success, the former country singer did receive a lot of backlash after releasing the music video for her song, “Anti-Hero,” which initially included a scene where Swift stands on a weighing scale as she watched the scale move upwards to the word “fat.”
People on social media had urged Swift to edit the video, calling the scene “triggering” and “fat-shaming” her fans who may struggle with eating disorders. The following day, Apple Music and YouTube both redacted the video and replaced it with an edited version that had taken out the “offensive” word.
“Taylor changed her ‘Anti-Hero’ music video on apple music and it doesn’t directly show the word [fat] on the scale. so glad she listened to criticism,” one person wrote on social media after noticing the music video had been updated.
Another echoed similar words by praising Swift for considering her fans’ wishes, “I’m glad Taylor Swift removed the shot of the scale reading ‘fat.’ Yes, it’s about her eating disorder and body dysmorphia, but they’re both rooted in fatphobia. She has a greater responsibility to her audience not to be fatphobic in recovery because she knows how toxic that is!”
Since the release of her self-titled album in 2006, Swift has become one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold over 120 million copies worldwide. And by the look of things, there are no signs to her career slowing down anytime soon; especially not with her reported plans to embark on a world tour next year.