Taylor Swift Tops the Charts

Taylor Swift

Surprise! Taylor Swift has the number one album in the country:

Lover earned 867,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 29, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 679,000 were in album sales. Both figures are the largest registered for any album in a single week since Swift’s reputation debuted with 1.238 million units in its first week, of which 1.216 million were in album sales (in the week ending Nov. 16, 2017).

The album accounted for 27% of all U.S. album sales last week.

Taylor Swift on Sexism, Scrutiny, and Standing Up for Herself

Taylor Swift

Abby Aguirre, writing for Vogue:

I ask her, why get louder about LGBTQ rights now? “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” she says. “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of. It’s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze. Because my mistakes are very loud. When I make a mistake, it echoes through the canyons of the world. It’s clickbait, and it’s a part of my life story, and it’s a part of my career arc.”

Taylor Swift Opens Up About Her Master Recordings Being Purchased

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift has posted on Tumblr about her masters being sold to Scooter Braun:

For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in. I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past. Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums. […]

This is my worst case scenario. This is what happens when you sign a deal at fifteen to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value’, he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.

Capitalism is destructive to most industries, but it’s always felt specifically exploitative to me in the arts.