Taylor Swift breaks Elvis Presley's US album chart record

Taylor Swift has set a new record, yet again. This week, the singer overtook music legend Elvis Presley as the solo artist with the most weeks at the top of the US album charts. This was announced by the music magazine Billboard, which publishes the charts.

Her current album "1989 (Taylor's Version)" is No. 1 in the US album charts for the fifth consecutive week. This means the 34-year-old has had an album at the top for a total of 68 weeks, breaking Presley's record of 67 weeks. However, the Beatles remain overall record holders, with their albums having spent 132 weeks at the top of the Billboard album chart.

"Taylor Swift found a way to transcend borders and be a source of light," Time editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote in a statement when the magazine named the US pop superstar as its Person of the Year in 2023. "Swift is the rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story."

"Much of what Swift accomplished in 2023 exists beyond measurement. She mapped her journey and shared the results with the world: She committed to validating the dreams, feelings, and experiences of people, especially women, who felt overlooked and regularly underestimated," added Jacobs.

There’s no denying it: Swift is currently among the most successful pop stars on the planet, an absolute cultural and economic powerhouse. 

Her record-breaking distinctions include more No. 1 albums on the US Billboard charts than any woman in history; in 2022, her album "Midnights" pushed UK vinyl sales past those for CDs for the first time in 35 years; and she became the most streamed female artist on Spotify in 2023. 

Her current "Eras" world tour is on track to become the highest-grossing tour ever. Concert dates have become significant economic factors for the host cities, which have on occasion found themselves having to make public-transit system improvements to deal with the numbers of concertgoers. She even managed to put the German city of Gelsenkirchen on the global map by booking her tour there.

Analyzing the hype from all angles

There are countless articles online attempting to analyze and explain why and how Swift has had this success and impact. Experts from fields such as economics, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience and music management have all tried to parse the phenomenon. Universities in the US and Australia are organizing conferences on the Swift phenomenon. There's even a Wikipedia article dedicated solely to the "Cultural impact of Taylor Swift." 

But maybe you, dear reader, just don't get the hype. Maybe you have listened repeatedly to Swift's music, trying — and failing — to hear in it what so many others seem to do. Perhaps the repeated assertions by critics and experts that she's an exceptionally gifted songwriter just don't convince you. 

'Swifties' in unexpected places

Full disclosure: This author is one of those people. If the critics couldn't convince me, why not ask fans themselves?

So I turned to people who, at least at one point, shared my music taste: members of a Facebook fan group devoted to the British band IDLES. You might think there wouldn’t be any overlap between shouty left-wing punk and Swift's glossy pop music, but it turns out there is.

One "Swiftie" (as Taylor Swift fans are known), 25-year-old Amy Duhig from the UK, said: "I think she captures girlhood amazingly. She's gotten a lot of hate for being very feminine but hasn't changed anything about herself ... You can also see her grow so much in her music, and older fans feel like they have grown up with her as young teenagers ... She's very good at putting feelings into words and writing in metaphors that people can relate to. She writes about so many different situations but can really capture people's feelings and probably makes them feel understood." 

"I think she really knows how to capture a moment and she can evoke memories in me like no other artist," said Melanie Horne, a Canadian fan closer to Swift's age. "I'm in my 30s, but I can sit down and listen to a song she wrote when she was a teenager, and I'm transported back to high school again. The songs that she wrote when she was young completely capture all the best and worst things about a girl growing up." 

Horne predicts Swift will one day be recognized as the voice of a generation of women. 

Swift fans aren't only young women

But even women older than that generation find Swift's music relatable.

A German fan, 45-year-old Kathy Kossatz, said her "music is glossy and intimate at the same time. […] When listening to Taylor, you get the feeling she is alone with you in a room. It feels close while also being catchy pop music." 

When asked why Kossatz thinks the pop star is so successful, she said Swift's "music connects with the most diverse people. Mainstream pop fans love the accessibility and catchiness, teenagers feel heard, music nerds and critics acknowledge her talent and even indie/punk rock fans like me cannot resist. Her music and the topics she sings about are very universal. It's relationship stuff, some songs are a bit socio-critical but not too much, yet it always feels honest and smart and (almost) never dull. This makes it appealing to so many different people." 

That diverse appeal was reflected in responses from people like David van der Burg, a 56-year-old in the UK who "will always identify as a punk." 

"I love that so many of her songs tell a story and do so within the confines of a short pop song, quite a talent," he said. "What sets her apart from her contemporaries, and why she is so successful, is her repeated ability to reinvent herself. Even my die-hard indie friends loved 'Folklore' and 'Evermore,'" he added, referring to the two albums Swift wrote and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic and that veered into the indie-folk genre. 

Admired for asserting her rights

Van der Burg also highlighted a non-musical aspect of Swift's appeal: her assertion of herself as an artist.

As Hayden Binns put it, "The most bada** piece of 'f*ck you' to the music industry is her current re-recording of her back catalog following the sale of her masters. I read about it, thought it was a cool thing and then started listening to her. I'm now a big fan even if I started my musical listening journey as a metalhead." 

Admiration for Swift's assertion of her artistic independence was echoed by others. Even those who don't care for her music appreciate that aspect of her career, and some said the way she stood up for herself in the face of a sexual assault changed their minds.

"The turning point for me was the court case, where she very calmly and intellectually took apart the testimony of the bloke that had put his hand up her skirt," said UK fan Jo Shepherd. "She was so incredible and still relatively young." 

With that combination of such broad appeal, confidence and a willingness to experiment and grow as an artist, it seems likely the Taylor Swift phenomenon will go on for some time to come, at least as long as she can make her experiences relatable to others while still surprising fans with her music and image. 

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier / Brenda Haas

Update: This is an updated version of an article that was first published on October 12, 2023.