Taylor Swift's lover is a guaranteed success – Rolling Stone



[ad_1]

As Taylor Swift prepares to go out Lover Friday, she returns to a pop world that has undergone profound changes. "Before, it was a push case," said composer Savan Kotecha (Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber) explained in 2018. "Tags push an actor into a TV show, a rewards show, get that spot, get the radio [play] and [the song] go. Now it's more of an attraction activity … it's all about throwing content. Television screens and broadcast directors arrive later, if they come, but these guards no longer need to go unnoticed.

Kotecha's theory was strongly demonstrated in 2019. Take Billie Eilish, who has the second biggest album of the year to date. She released When we fall asleep, where are we going? in March after broadcasting 16 singles and an EP about 30 months. Previously, the labels were waiting for a great radio success before launching an album. In this new world, Eilish did not have his first number one radio hit before May, nearly two months after the release of the album.

This trajectory is not specific to Eilish. Rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie recorded the fifth biggest album of the year at the end of June. SZN hoodie was released before Christmas; it took nearly six months for the main single "Look Back to It" to reach Number One on the radio, and the rapper was still not invited to one of the three biggest late-night television shows. His label mate, Lizzo, released a series of singles from 2017 that eventually led to the Because I like you; "Truth Hurts" became his first number one on the air at the end of July.

But as new stars triumph in a "sweatshirt affair", Taylor Swift may well be the last of the defenders of the old school. She leads to her seventh studio album, Lover, with a bombardment carpet advertising campaign that few people can match.

This dam includes, but is not limited to, its Amazon Prime Day concert, which was broadcast live and then repackaged for later viewing by curious Amazon Prime viewers; a partnership with Capital One including an ad and a lot of t-shirts for Capital One cardholders; an agreement with Spotify, in which Swift shares audio messages and stories behind his songs on the platform; an agreement with YouTube Music that involves a Livestream event and a first video; an agreement with iHeartMedia, much like the one Swift had put in place to Reputation, in which the Top 40, Adult Contemporary and "Hot AC" stations of the radio conglomerate, 135 in total, broadcast every hour of Swift's new music; a simultaneous promotion with SiriusXM Hits 1, which is spreading throughout the country; another Amazon contract where an image of Swift appears on the package for everything you ordered; and a long-standing agreement with Target, which promises to carry four to four! Even the press release of Target seemed surprised – different luxury versions of Lover.

Taken together, it means that only a few hermits will not fall on Lover. And this marketing blitzkrieg is not unusual for Swift, the only artist in history to have sold more than a million album-equivalent units in the first week of the week on four separate occasions (Speak Now, red, 1989, ReputationHer fans are an old model: she is ready to buy what she sells in a moment. Only three other artists managed more than one million sales, and they all did it when the record market was the most sparkling: Eminem (Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem show), "NSync (Celebrity, No strings attached) and the Backstreet Boys (Black and blue, Millennium)

These numbers are almost incomprehensible now. Eilish and A Boogie wit da Hoodie both dominated the standings with less than 65,000 units equivalent to an album. Although this was not the case during their first few weeks, it is becoming increasingly clear that attractive artists are on the rise. But Swift will move on to another number one, the last titan in a whole new world.

[ad_2]

Source link