Taylor Swift has spent her career breaking records, but this week she hit an all-time high.
For the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated Nov. 5, 2022, which ranks the week’s most popular songs in the United States, Swift became the first artist to hold all Top 10 spots in the chart’s history. This is also the first time in the Billboard Hot 100’s 64-year history that there isn’t a single male artist in the Top 10.
Swift’s Top 10 singles ranking surpasses the record recently held by Canadian rapper Drake, who claimed nine of the Top 10 spots in September 2021.
Swift’s newest accomplishment comes on the heels of the release of her highly anticipated 10th studio album Midnights, which dropped fittingly, at midnight on Friday, October 21. The release catapulted 10 of the album’s 13 songs into the ranking’s Top 10 spots. Midnights is also Swift’s biggest album debut to date – 16 years into her career.
Midnights’ release also upped Swift’s count of Top 10 hits to 40, surpassing Madonna for the most hits held by women in the chart’s history (Madonna has 38 Top 10 hits.) Additionally, Swift has eclipsed both Drake and The Beatles for earning the most titles in the top of the Hot 100 in a single week (each of whom infused the top five for a week each in 2021 and 1964, respectively.)
With Midnights’ release, Swift officially has earned 188 US Billboard Hot 100 chart entries, including nine number-one hits and 40 Top-10 songs. Among all acts, she only trails Drake, who has 59 Top-10 songs.
Leading Swift’s reign on the Hot 100 is her newest single “Anti-Hero” which sits at the top spot – Swift’s ninth number one hit on the chart. Following is the official ranking:
Overall, the entirety of Midnights’ 13-song standard edition debuts in the Top 15 – Swift also holds the 13th, 14th, 15th, 20th, 21st, 26th, 32nd, 33rd, 41st, and 45th spots on the chart this week.
In the two weeks since Midnights’ release, Swift has set many other records. The album hit number one on the Billboard 200 album chart dated November 5, 2022. Besides being Swift’s 11th number one-ranking album, Midnights created the biggest week for any release in seven years. According to @theswiftsociety_ on Instagram, it’s predicted that the album will remain in the number one spot on next week’s chart as well.
Thanks to Midnights and ‘Anti-Hero,’ Swift is the first artist to have debuted atop the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously four times.
Midnights’ lineup is making streaming history as well. Swift’s ‘Anti-Hero’ broke the all-time record for the most streamed song on its debut day on Spotify Global, surpassing Drake’s ‘Girls Want Girls.’
Midnights debuted with over 184 million streams in its first day on Spotify – the biggest opening day for an album in Spotify history, making Swift the most streamed artist in a day in Spotify history. The album reached over 1 billion streams on Spotify in just 10 days – making it the fastest album in the platform’s history to reach this milestone. Swift has reached over 10 billion streams on Spotify in 2022. She now records the biggest streaming year for any female artist in the platform’s history.
Swift holds the biggest debut week in Spotify history with 776 million streams, surpassing Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti. Swift holds the records for biggest streaming day, week, month, year, decade, century, and now history by a female artist across all credits on Spotify, according to the streaming platform. Billboard noted that streams were strong enough for her to occupy the entire Top 10 on the Hot 100 without any sales or radio play.
In terms of radio reach, ‘Anti-Hero,’ debuted at number 13 on Billboard’s Radio Songs Chart, the highest debut this year and Swift’s best opening rank among 45 career entries.
Swift became the first artist in Nielsen history to have five albums each sell at least one million copies in its first week in the US. Midnights broke the record for the biggest vinyl sales week in the modern era.
Swift’s triumph is also breaking barriers among female recording artists. Swift now joins Ariana Grande as the only soloist in history to occupy the entire Top 3 of the Billboard Hot 100. She is also now tied with icon Barbara Streisand for women with the most number one albums in Billboard 200 history (both artists hold 11 number one albums.)
According to a Spotify billboard in the Big Apple’s bustling Times Square, New Yorkers spent 31.2 million minutes listening to Midnights in just four days.
The opening track of Midnights – ‘Lavender Haze’ – has just surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify, making it the fastest non-single to reach this milestone in history.
In addition to Swift’s record-breaking opening week, on November 1, 2022 she announced that after a four year hiatus, she’ll be embarking on her sixth official tour “The Eras Tour” which begins in March 2023.
As Taylor Swift’s continuous record-breaking shows no signs of slowing down, what else can Taylor and Midnights achieve? Stay tuned to find out!