Taylor Swift breaks huge streaming record with The Tortured Poets Department after just one week

Taylor Swift’s latest recordThe Tortured Poets Department has become the first album to reach one billion Spotify streams in a week.

The 31-track album is already the UK’s fastest-selling record of 2024 so far, with singles “Fortnight” (featuring Post Malone), “The Tortured Poets Department” and “So, Long, London”, expected to rank high the UK singles chart.

Spotify announced on Twitter/X thatThe Tortured Poets Department had become the “most streamed album in a single week” after hitting over a billion streams just five days since its release.

After the album dropped on 19 April, The Tortured Poets Department also became Spotify’s most streamed album in a single day. The record was previously held by Swift’s 2022 album Midnights, which hit 184.7million daily streams.

Although Spotify is yet to release the exact streaming figures for The Tortured Poets Department, it was “the first album in Spotify history” to have “over 300 million streams in a single day” the platform announced on Twitter/X this week.

Swift’s latest release has already sold 1.5 million copies and 700,000 vinyl copies, with full sales and streaming figures set to be announced on Thursday (25 April).

As well as breaking numerous records, The Tortured Poets Department has seen hoards of praise from critics since its release. For The Independent’s reviewer Helen Brown, Swift’s 11th studio album is a five star success that “explores failure and triumph with the same bittersweet nuance”.

She writes: “The whole album is a terrific reminder of the intense, personal connection Swift can conjure in song. She fills arenas and dominates the news agenda because listeners can relate to her starry dramas – her tales endow their own experiences with new electricity.”

The album’s success comes after the Pet Shop Boys singer vocalist Neil Tennant called Taylor Swift’s “disappointing”.

Speaking at the Guardian Live event “An Evening with Pet Shop Boys” Tennant said he couldn’t understand Swift’s popularity and claimed her discography doesn’t stand up to those of pop stars like Michael Jackson.

“What is Taylor Swift’s ‘Billie Jean’?” he asked. “‘Shake It Off’? I listened to that the other day and it is not ‘Billie Jean’, is it?” Tennant said, according to The Mirror.

The “It’s a Sin” musician added he likes Swift’s music because it “brings people together” but “the one disappointing thing is the music, not the lyrics”.