With an almost cartoonish level of dominance, Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, has taken over the charts, with every single track from the record now sitting in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 12, led by “The Fate of Ophelia,” “Opalite,” and “Elizabeth Taylor.” Last year, she filled the top 14 with songs from The Tortured Poets Department. Now, she’s done it again, reminding everyone that the pop machine still answers to her.
In the Philippines, the response to the album has been characteristically loud but also layered. Data from consumer intelligence company Meltwater shows that Filipino listeners contributed around 20,000 online mentions of the album, one of the highest engagement rates in Asia after China, where the engagement is at 51,000 as of October 5. Still, these numbers pale in comparison to the US, where the album has received over 314,000 mentions.
Meltwater also found that sentiment on the album skews more positive in the Philippines than the global average, at 38 percent versus 31 percent, but most conversations remain neutral. Only 4.9 percent of engagements were negative or critical, and a majority, 57 percent, were neither for nor against the album.
The neutrality may say more about Swift’s current phase than the songs themselves. While fans are quick to react by flooding timelines with early praise, general audiences seem less moved. Does it mean that her meticulously engineered marketing machine isn’t working anymore?
The numbers say no. While many aren’t sold on the fantasy and spectacle of Showgirl, Swift now enjoys half a billion streams on the album and 4 million unit sales, beating the record Adele set in 2015 with 3.5 million sales for 25. Swift’s performance in the charts is also bolstered by the 34 different versions of The Life of a Showgirl. Billboard lists 27 physical iterations in the form of CDs, eight vinyl LPs, and one cassette, as well as seven download variants — all of which Swifties are no doubt collecting.
So, you may not like her music, but her fans do, and the Showgirl can rest assured they will continue to buy records in bulk and clear the shelves to keep her on top of the charts.
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