Good morning, Broadsheet readers! New bosses mean workplace stress, Aritzia’s founder reportedly created a toxic work environment, and Fortune senior writer Alicia Adamczyk digs into the summer of Swift. Have a terrific Tuesday!
– The ‘TSwift lift.’ If there’s a record Taylor Swift hasn’t broken this summer, it likely won’t take much longer. From touring to streaming to physical music sales, Swift, 33, is utterly dominant, living through a third career peak at an age when women in entertainment can be, in her own words, “discarded in an elephant graveyard.”
The Eras Tour is so popular it’s created its own mini-economy in the U.S. Even the Federal Reserve credited Swift’s concerts for “strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic.” Analysts are calling it the “TSwift Lift.” The tour itself is projected to gross over $1 billion, according to concert tracking site Pollstar, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time and Swift the only woman to breach the top 10.
(Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan of Swift’s since her debut album and attended the Eras Tour earlier this summer.)
As impressive as it is, it’s not just the tour that’s been making an impact. Earlier this month, Swift released Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the third album she has rerecorded. She embarked on the rerecording project after the masters for her first six albums were sold, she says, without her knowledge in 2019 to a businessman she has bad blood with, named Scooter Braun. By rereleasing her music, she hopes to regain control over her life’s work (and stick it to Braun in the process).
It’s an emotional and artistic decision for Swift, but it’s also pretty good for business. Swift is one of the few artists who can still drive significant physical sales. SNTVdebuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 507,000 copies, according to Luminate. As of this writing, four of her albums sit in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, the first time a living artist has charted so many at once. She now has more No. 1 albums than any woman in history.
Taylor Swift performs onstage at Lumen Field on July 22, 2023 in Seattle.Mat Hayward—TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management These are astounding figures for any modern artist, made even more impressive by the fact that most of her newest album is not, well, new music.
That’s in part thanks to the Eras Tour, which is working in tandem with her rereleases. As fans rediscover old favorites at her shows, or new fans hear them for the first time, all of her albums have been spiking on digital music services this year, making her the top-streamed female artist on Spotify (only The Weeknd is currently besting her there). As far as marketing efforts go, it’s hard to beat.
Since the release of Midnights in October last year, a scene from her 2020 documentary Miss Americana has played repeatedly in my head. In it, 29-year-old Swift reflects on her status in the music industry and wonders about her legacy. “This is probably one of my last opportunities as an artist to grasp on to that kind of success,” she says. “As I’m reaching 30, I want to work really hard while society is still tolerating me being successful.”
Those who know Swift’s music aren’t surprised by those ruminations. A yearning for girlhood, the pressures of growing up, and fears of an uncertain future are common touch points throughout her catalog, reflected in songs like Innocent, Nothing New, and Seven.
Swift need not worry too much. Since that documentary was released, she has released three critically-acclaimed new albums—Folklore, Evermore, and Midnights—and three rerecorded albums. Folklore earned her her third Album of the Year at the Grammys, while Midnights became the top-selling album of 2022, doubling sales of the runner-up. She has sold out a world stadium tour and crashed Ticketmaster, inspiring a bipartisan Congressional hearing on the company’s sales practices. She is not only being tolerated, but celebrated.
Swift has long been credited for her business acumen. But 2023 is taking her to heights reached by very few artists, male or female, in the past. The girl in the dress is on top of the world—and has decades yet to add to her legacy.
Alicia Adamczyk
[email protected]
@AliciaAdamczyk
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