That's kind of the fun of it, though lol. The wild swings from year to year, the push and pull between artistic and commercial values, what the weird and not-so-weird winners say about the time periods in which they won, etc. It is absolutely the most fascinating of the big award shows.
I fully expect Noah Kahan to win AOTY next year, mostly based on the strength of his popularity on the previous album (a la Babel, but we don't know if Great Divide will be worse/better yet than Stick Season).
Four different remixes, on CD, all shipping 7/23. This feels like she is setting up missiles for that week, set to fire Taylor Swift Official Online Store
Looks like Opalite is going to hit #1 on the charts next week. The amount of physical sales she got is insane.
it doesn't matter anymore if an artist is actually great. they just need their fans to have a disposable income.
To be fair, it never really mattered if an artist was actually great. Plenty of dogshit hits from talent-deficient artists have topped the Hot 100. The problem is more that it feels that the number 1 hit as a distinction doesn’t really mean anything anymore. It had a significance and power that survived through a lot of different eras of the industry, but I genuinely think that’s gone now.
For sure. I agree with all that. Plus, "number one hits" come and go so fast these days. How many of them will have any kind of actual cultural impact after the song's lifespan? It really means mostly nothing now.
I saw somewhere that she hasn't had two #1 singles from an album since 1989, which in retrospect makes a lot of since when the last few albums had no pre-release singles. So I feel like artificially making this album be her "first since 1989 with two #1 singles" is another way to kinda prove that this album is beloved, or whatever
I'd rather it be a song that was gamesmanshipped to the top of the charts instead of a song that has 30 viral seconds on TikTok, tbh.
The funny thing is that, in terms of actual stints at number 1, the opposite is actually true. A lot of songs recently have stuck around at the top of the charts forever, but they don't FEEL like they did. That Shaboozey song from a couple years ago is a great example: had a similar number 1 streak to "Old Town Road," but felt about 10 percent as pervasive. 1989 is actually the only album of hers that had more than 1 chart-topper, and it had three. (Lover probably would have ended up with three if it hadn't run into the buzzsaw that was the aforementioned "Old Town Road.")
Being a #1 hit is now the same as a nyt best selling book. No one cares, plenty of randoms get one, and no one actually knows what the criteria is or how it translates to a tangible understanding of popularity
I don't even think opalite needed all that to hit number 1. I've been hearing it on radio over Ophelia since the album release and it should've probably been the first single anyway It did make me lol when spotifys lil notification thing popped up asking if I wanted to watch the music video tho. Also it's so rare I'm listening to spotify and just sitting there. I'm either exercising or driving and either way I'm not about to sit and watch a music video on there sis
The fact that we all witnessed in real time how she manufactured the #1, step by step, and knew exactly which week it would happen, is pretty wild