Whether it was her 7 time award winning “Blank Space ” or her 9 time award winning “Shake it off”, it is safe to say that Taylor Swift is a worldwide name. She has been breaking records in the music industry since 2008, but that isn’t where she started. When she was 9, Taylor Swift started taking singing lessons, which led to her getting her first record deal with Big Machine Records at the age of 15. This up and coming country star released her second album, Fearless which debuted at No.1. This album won Taylor Swift her first album of the year at the GRAMMYs in 2009. In 2014, her fifth album 1989, sold 14 million copies.  This catchy pop album allowed Taylor Swift’s popularity to reach new heights. She is one of few artists who have transitioned into 3 different genres while still maintaining extreme levels of success. Most recently she came out with a new album called “Midnights”.

On August 29th 2022, Taylor Swift was at the VMAs where she received 3 different awards. During her acceptance speech for “Video of the Year” Taylor Swift announced that her newest album Midnights would be released by October 21st, fans were surprised and excited for brand new music. The next 7 weeks consisted of brilliant marketing decisions and constant social media promotions. Every 2-3 days she would release the track name to a new song, this kept viewers interested. She used designs, billboards, and merchandise to grow the fans’ anticipation. On the night of Midnights’ release, many different streaming services crashed briefly. The 13 track album was an electronic pop mixture, which surprised many people because her last album was a combination of indie-folk music. Fans were thrown a curveball on the release night when Taylor Swift dropped 7 new songs at 3 a.m.. Within the first 24 hours of Midnight’s release it hit 184.6 million streams, a new record. Her new song “Snow on the beach (feat. Lana Del Rey)” had the most single-week streams for an all-female collaboration in Spotify history, with 57.484 million streams. Taylor Swift also became the first artist in history to occupy all top 10 spots of the Billboard top 100. Overall, it was a historical week for the music industry.

In a survey on student opinions on Midnights, when asked if they had heard Taylor Swift’s music before, every single person said yes. The students that had listened to Midnights, which was the majority, had mixed reviews. One student said, “ I expected the album to be a continuation of Folklore and Evermore, but it was more of a pop album, which I don’t mind, but the electric element was kind of cringy and reminded me of 2017”. Another student said, “Reputation is my favorite album, so Midnights was a 10/10 album for me. I love her music so much and she manages to keep releasing amazing music”. The average rating for Midnights was 8.5/10 and the student’s favorite tracks were “You’re on your own kid”, “Should’ve Could’ve Would’ve”, and “Maroon”. Lastly, when asked if they would attend her Eras Tour, everybody said yes. Presale tickets are available to purchase on November 15th at 10am. She has 52 shows scheduled just in the U.S., but don’t let the long number of shows fool you, tickets will be difficult to get. This tour is projected to sell out most shows and crash Ticketmaster on the 15th and the 18th of November.

Despite all of these incredible records Taylor Swift has set, the question still remains: Will she be able to outdo her previous albums in the future? Only time will tell.