Woman power!

 

These days, it’s pretty hard to hold on to the Billboard 200’s top spot. Which is a clear sign of the remarkable volume of talent out there, if there ever was one… And a testament to the variety of genres, styles and influences too: in the past few months, number #1 albums have included J. Cole’s The Off-Season, Morgan Wallen (with the controversy that came with it), Moneybagg Yo, Justin Bieber, Pop Smoke, Luke Combs, The Weeknd, DJ Khaled… as well as Olivia Rodrigo and debut album SOUR, who made her the most recent reigning queen. Until this week, with the grand return of pop superstar Taylor Swift!

How is Swift back on top, you ask? Fair question, given how incredibly prolific the artist has been of late: 2 new albums in 6 months, a re-recording of her 2008 hit Fearless, a documentary… Yet it is her latest original effort, the critically acclaimed Evermore, which has her back at #1 this week. After charting at #74 last week: talk about a jump. There are several reasons for that rather remarkable turn of events:

1. Evermore is indeed a great album, which is still very much listened to on streaming platforms, downloaded on digital platforms, cited by other artists and, one day maybe, to be performed onstage by the artist herself. A (wo)man can hope.
2. A series of effective marketing operations coincided this week, with the album being heavily discounted on digital platforms for one. Also, a new Swift-signed series of CDs went on sale, which proved to be a very hot product. It’s all about that retro feel…
3. More than any other reason, though, the fact that Evermore was released in vinyl, after significant teasing, is arguably responsible for that turn of events (talk about retro…). As it happens, the vinyl edition broke all vinyl records since modern tracking started in 1991, selling 40 000 copies in the first 3 days and 102 000 in the first week…

There’s no getting around it: Taylor Swift is all over the place, leading the charge on streaming platforms, breaking records in digital download, relaunching the CD format… and now vinyls. Current #2 Olivia Rodrigo, who enjoyed a massive debut release last week, will probably not complain being outranked: she joins the army of Swift fans and supporters who are always ready to applaud whenever the artist breaks new ground. And that’s often…