Look what she made the top 10 do: Taylor Swift has become the first artist in history to command all 10 of the top spots on the Billboard Hot 100 in a single week, with songs from her fervently consumed “Midnights” album doing the trick. The previous record-holder was Drake, who managed to lock in nine out of 10 songs when “Certified Lover Boy” came out last year.
The leader among Swift’s current bestsellers and best-streamers is, not surprisingly, “Anti-Hero,” which was the first music video from the album and the first song to be promoted to radio when all of the 13 songs from the album were launched simultaneously as the clock struck Oct. 21. Per Luminate, the track came out of the gate with 59.7 million streams and 32 million airplay audience impressions, which, along with a modest amount of individual sales downloads, pushed “Anti-Hero” to become her ninth No. 1 single on the Hot 100.
The runner-up is the album’s opening track, “Lavender Haze,” which was high on streams — 41.4 million — but far behind the leader in radio airplay, with 2.4 million impressions, although that’s still an unusually strong number for a song not being pushed as a single. The remaining songs in the top 10: “Maroon,” “Snow on the Beach“ (audio clickbait if such a thing ever existed, with a featured appearance and credited co-write with Lana Del Rey), “Midnight Rain,” “Bejeweled,” “Question…?,” “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” “Karma” and “Vigilante Shit.”
What’s remarkable is that all of the songs in the top 10 surpassed 400,000 in radio airplay impressions, despite not being tagged as singles. The least played of these songs at radio was “Vigilante Shit,” probably because its title and language was problematic for some stations, although its 424,000 impressions at radio indicate plenty of outlets were still down with it.
For anyone wondering how the remaining three songs from the standard edition fared, rest assured that they aren’t too much the runt of the litter. Billboard has not released the full chart or reported on positons beyond the top 10, but Republic Records put out a release saying that the non-deluxe version’s 13 songs all made it into the top 15.
It hasn’t been long since Swift’s last No. 1 on the Hot 100, although that one reached the top with very little radio play, as “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)” was, in fact, a radio-unfriendly 10 minutes long. That one debuted and peaked in the top spot in November 2021. Her last chart-topper that was not a remake, as that one was, was “Willow” at the end of 2020.
From Variety US