hey everyone Anthony fantano here the internet's busiest music nerd I hope you're doing well let's talk about something we don't often dive to deep into on this channel the charts yes the Billboard charts the most popular singles and albums out there today they're not usually that interesting of a topic and because you're normal you're most likely not aware that for the past seven weeks without fail uh the number one top dog on the albums chart on Billboard has been Taylor Swift's tortured poet's Department that's right despite some pretty massive pop artists as of late dropping
new LPS putting their hat in the ring uh they have been deprived of that number one spot dual leipa Billy ish most recently whose numbers in her first week of sales and streams fell just below Taylor now for any of you who actually heard the tortured poet's department and observed the uh General reception of the album you you might be kind of confused why is the record still like sitting at the highest spot on the billboard right now I mean obviously the record is still seeing a lot of streams and a lot of purchases but
uh this whole thing isn't exactly happening organically let's say in the weeks since this albums release Taylor Swift keeps putting out and keeps reintroducing new versions of the album of course you've got CD you've got cassette you've got different vinyl variants different track lists being featured among some of these there are actually uh new digital versions of the album that had been introduced too which feature like phone draft memo versions of songs from the album and let me not also neglect to mention uh you had the standard edition of the album and the Anthology that
added an entire records worth of material on top of it to start so look don't get me wrong here Taylor Swift uh by all means had a very well engineered and planned out album roll out to start for the tortured poets department and the music industry and streaming platforms have all the incentive in the world uh to push a record like this as much as possible because her stuff typically is so listenable so digestible but make no mistake with these new versions and with these constant reintroductions of the record Taylor Swift is fighting tooth and
nail to stay at this number one spot with this album as excessive as this may seem to any non fan of Taylor Swift or uh maybe any person that doesn't really follow the pop side of the music industry that closely what Taylor's doing here isn't all that egregious unfortunately every year it kind of becomes more and more the standard and artists have been pushing for ways to kind of inflate their album sales for quite a while now I mean at one point it was kind of the whole bundles thing with tickets and other stuff and
then billboard kind of put the kabash on that these days it seems to be taking more this shape I mean even Billy Alish herself has tons and tons of different variance of her new record out now so I mean this is just kind of the current Day game of the music industry and ultimately you can't really be mad at Taylor per se for just kind of playing it better but I feel like uh what she did most recently U kind of takes the cake a little bit and seems like very obviously kind of petty because
uh if you guys were aware uh one of the biggest and most recent pop records to drop this past week uh was Charlie xx's at hopefully at this point nobody in the comments needs uh Charlie xx's existence and popularity and music style uh explain to them like you you should know this by now if not maybe go uh check out my brat review go check out her past projects check out everything either way I've been enjoying Charlie stuff for quite a while and she has um kind of a reputation for being one of these um
I I would say mid tier not in an insulting way you know almost like cult following type pop artists where their style and their sound is just a little bit alternative but simultaneously they do have some massive hits in their catalog and while they may not be as mainstream as a Taylor Swift for example they're still undeniably making pop music that is of a very high level of quality again you could say this about Charlie XCX you could say this about Karly Ray Jepson there are a lot of artists that kind of fit into this
Lane now the interesting thing about Charlie and brat is that it's her most commercially successful record to date despite the fact that her last album crash was very obviously an attempt on her part on making music that had a wider Appeal on brat she wasn't going for that quite as obviously and lo and behold This Record actually ended up doing better numbers-wise still though even with Charlie killing it in record sales and the way that she has been with this album uh the record was not sort of like any threat at all to Taylor Swift
uh being at the number one spot on the billboard 200 this week I mean as good as Charlie Sales are they're just like not really quite at that level the album did manage to land at number three on Billboard though which is really impressive for her and it's great to see her having that success however Charlie isn't from the US she's from the UK where her fan base is a bit more saturated across the population she was expected to chart much better there and was pretty likely to take that number one spot this week however
the same week Charlie drops this album uh Taylor Swift put out a UK only edition of the tortured poets Department which to me seems like too pointed and too specific of a decision by Taylor and her team to not like be in reaction to brat being released Charlie also seemingly tried to bolster her numbers a little bit this week as well dropping a new version of brat that had three additional tracks on it a couple of really good bangers Spring Breakers and guests which have really been popping off among the fans numbers wise and uh
look Charlie Sales in the UK this week for her new record were quite good but she still was deprived of that number one spot now not all hope is lost if you even care about brat going number one anywhere to begin with because it seems like the fans are really enjoying the album that a lot of tracks on it are staying in constant rotation uh the records numbers could hold strong for another couple of weeks and maybe Charlie will get it um toward the end of this month something like that if she gets it if
she doesn't get it ultimately doesn't matter because she made an incredible record it's going to be a pop record that will be defining the Aesthetics of the genre for a minute and really kind of setting the standard for Club Music generally and that's the kind of impact and influence you can't really Force but yeah ultimately while I guess Taylor Swift is entitled to release as many versions of her album as she wants wherever she wants these moves just continually wkak of desperation on her part a total lack of Shame too as she seems to just
not be pumping the brakes at all on shoving this Rec down everyone's throat a record that many believe to have some of her weakest and most obnoxious songwriting to date not to mention completely stale production from Jack antinoff to but there you have it ladies and gentlemen you can in fact keep mid at the number one spot as long as you have a rabid fan base willing to consume it over and over and over and over again and purchase and repurchase every single time you put out new iterations of it oh and you also need
someone Petty enough to see other artists in the music industry as their competition and then to be strategically trying to prevent those artists from getting any Shine off of their new records too how's that for me me me me me feminism and I think we can leave it there over here next to my head is another video that you can check out hit that up or a link to subscribe to the channel uh Anthony fantano uh the tortured poets department number one of forever I just feel like Artistry shines through you know what I'm saying
wo
