Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ Proves Self-Made Success

For female artists of the music industry, the idea of reinventing one’s self in order to stay relevant seems simply part of the journey towards success. Whether through exploring new music genres or style aesthetics, being interesting and surprising is essential in the business of entertainment, and perhaps no other female artist has continually been as successful and ever-evolving as singer-songwriter, Taylor Swift.

If her 14-year career and numerous awards wasn’t enough to prove it, then the creation of her newest album, “Folklore,” most definitely does. The album has spent a second consecutive week at No. 1.

Swift released her eighth studio album, “Folklore,” on July 24, after almost a year since her previous award-winning album, “Lover.” The announcement of a new album came as a total surprise to fans and the music industry, as there was no promotion done leading up to its release.

Swift said of the spontaneous announcement,

“Before this year I probably would’ve overthought when to release this music at the ‘perfect’ time, but the times we’re living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed. My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.”

This gut decision has proven very successful for Swift so far, as Folklore has been received by the public and the music industry as Swift’s best album yet.

The album is pure indie style with 16 songs varying in fictional stories of people, images and moments. True to Swift’s artistic niche, she wrote the entire album herself, with some tracks being co-written with several other musical entities, including indie artists: Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dressner, and Bon Iver.

“Folklore” achieved the biggest debut week of any album in the U.S. since Swift’s last album release. More history was made when the album’s leading single “Cardigan” debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart simultaneously with the Billboard 200.

The success of “Cardigan” comes with the song’s music video, which was the first released. Not only did Swift write the dreamy and whimsical piece that is still at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, but she also directed the video, which has earned over 44 million views on Youtube. It also broke the global record for first-day album streams on Spotify by a female artist, reaching an incredible 80.6 million.

This is the second album Swift has made independent of Big Machine Records, a label which sold her previous six albums to record executive, Scooter Braun, in a deal that Swift had not anticipated. Since Braun purchased her discography, Swift has been in the works of re-recording her prior albums in order to own new mastered versions.

Thus far, songs from the album were streamed 134 million times and counting. Meanwhile, “Lover,”  has rebounded to No. 18 on Billboard’s 200.