taylor swift
Page: 15
It’s Taylor Swift‘s world, and we’re just living in it. Whether you’re counting awards, sales, chart success or all of the above, the 32-year-old pop star had a huge year — and that’s even by Swift’s standards.
But where to begin? There’s that time in May when she achieved her longtime goal of being bestowed with an honorary doctorate, donning NYU’s purple and black robes alongside thousands of other graduates to deliver 2022’s commencement speech. Or, there’s that time at the Tribeca Film Festival, and then again at the VMAs, and then again at the Toronto International Film Festival when she really stepped into her status as a filmmaker, earning recognition for her self-directed All Too Well: The Short Film.
And then there’s the obvious one: that time she dropped her tenth studio album Midnights and subsequently shattered one major record after another. Even the 11-time (soon to be more, possibly) Grammy winner herself couldn’t believe the astounding success.
“The fact that the fans have done this, the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it — I’m 32, so we’re considered geriatric pop stars,” she laughed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in October, in one of only a couple interviews she did for the Midnights release cycle. “They start trying to put us out to pasture at age 25, I’m just happy to be here.”
Keep reading to see a full list of Taylor Swift’s biggest career highs in 2022 below.
A Taylor Swift-signed guitar could be all yours while supporting a good cause.
Raven Drum Foundation’s second annual 12 Drummers Drumming auction is running through December 12, bringing together a list of music’s most influential artists to raise vital funds for veterans and first responders who are dealing with PTSD, trauma and suicidal ideation.
Along with Alvin Taylor’s sticks used to record George Harrison’s 33 & 1/3 album and Def Leppard limited edition, signed Hysteria Funko Pop! Figures, among the top items up for bidding is an acoustic guitar signed by none other than Swift. The instrument, donated by the multi-Grammy winner herself, features a photo from the singer’s Midnights shoot, in which she’s seen laying on a couch in a neutral-toned living room.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
At the time of publication, there are six bids on the guitar, with a week left before the auction wraps up. You can bid on the guitar here.
Founded by Rick Allen of Def Leppard and his wife Lauren Monroe, Raven Drum Foundation’s mission is “to serve, educate and empower veterans, first responders and trauma survivors with a focused effort to prevent suicide through innovative wellness-support programs,” according to press release.
More than two dozen Taylor Swift fans are suing Live Nation over Ticketmaster’s botched sale of tickets to her Eras tour last month, accusing the company of “anticompetitive conduct,” fraud and other forms of wrongdoing.
In a complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles court – the first known lawsuit over the fiasco – attorneys for the Swift fans called the sale a “disaster” and pinned the blame on Ticketmaster, which they called a “monopoly that is only interested in taking every dollar it can from a captive public.”
“In markets without a singular, monopolistic company, charging prices and fees like Ticketmaster would be impossible,” lawyers for the fans wrote. “And Ticketmaster does not do anything to justify these higher costs. Ticketmaster’s service is not superior or reliable; the massive disaster of the Taylor Swift presale is evidence enough of this.”
In addition to antitrust violations, the lawsuit accused Ticketmaster of intentionally misleading fans ahead of the sale – both by offering more presale codes than it had tickets to sell, and by allowing bots and scalpers into the sale. And because of the company’s unfair control over the secondary resale market, the Taylor fans say Ticketmaster was “eager to allow this arrangement.”
“Ticketmaster claimed that only those with codes would be able to join the presale, but millions of buyers without codes were able to get tickets,” the accusers wrote in the lawsuit. “Many of those without codes were scalpers, and Ticketmaster benefited from scalped tickets as they must be resold on Ticketmaster, who gets an additional fee.”
The new lawsuit came three weeks after the infamous Nov. 15 presale, which saw widespread service delays and website crashes as millions of fans tried – and many failed – to buy tickets for Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour.
Ticketmaster has apologized to fans and pinned the blame on a “staggering number of bot attacks” and “unprecedented traffic.” But that explanation has seemingly not been enough for many of the company’s critics, who have resurfaced longstanding complaints about the outsized power Ticketmaster and Live Nation have wielded in the market for live music since they merged in 2010.
Lawmakers in both parties on Capitol Hill have called for renewed antitrust scrutiny, and news broke days after the presale that the U.S. Department of Justice had already been investigating Live Nation for potential antitrust violations. Attorneys general in a number of states have also launched their own probes, looking to see whether any state-level consumer protection or antitrust laws were breached.
The new lawsuit echoed those gripes, saying that artists like “have no choice but to work through Ticketmaster” and that “virtually all major music concert ticket sales” are handled by the service. The company then leverages that control to dominate secondary ticket re-sales, the Taylor fans allege, giving the Ticketmaster an incentive to allow bots and scalpers into presales.
“Ticketmaster has stated that it has taken steps to address [scalping], but in reality, has taken steps to make additional profit from the scalped tickets,” lawyers for the Taylor fans wrote. “Ticketmaster forces purchases of tickets from its site to use only Ticketmaster’s Secondary Ticket Exchange for the resale of those tickets. Ticketmaster then gets the higher fees paid by fans who have no choice but to pay for the ‘right’ to use the Ticketmaster Secondary Ticket Exchange platform.”
Whether such claims will be legally successful remains to be seen. Proving that a company violates antitrust laws is no easy task, and linking those supposed violations to actual harm suffered by the spurned Swift fans will be equally difficult.
A rep for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment.
Taylor Swift’s Midnights logs a fifth week atop the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Dec. 10), while a flurry of holiday albums jingles in the top 10. Midnights earned 151,000 equivalent album units in the tracking week ending Dec. 1 in the U.S. (down 15%), according to Luminate. The last Swift album with more weeks at No. 1 is Folklore, which notched eight nonconsecutive weeks atop the list in 2020. Since then, she’s claimed four more chart-topping albums: Evermore (four weeks at No. 1 in 2020-21), Fearless (Taylor’s Version) (two weeks, 2021), Red (Taylor’s Version) (one week in 2021) and Midnights (five weeks so far).
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Also in the top 10, catalog holiday albums powered by streaming activity make waves as Michael Bublé’s former No. 1 Christmas rises 10-4, Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song vaults 18-8 and Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack jumps 17-10.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Dec. 10, 2022-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Tuesday (Dec. 6). For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of Midnights’ 151,000 equivalent album units earned, SEA units comprise 89,000 (down 24%, equaling 117.93 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks), album sales comprise 60,000 (up 5%) and SEA units comprise 2,000 (down 6%).
Five former No. 1s are Nos. 2-6 on the latest Billboard 200 chart. Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss holds at No. 2 (93,000 equivalent album units earned; down 22%), Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti is stationary at No. 3 (52,000 units; down 7%), Bublé’s Christmas climbs 10-4 (47,000 units; up 55%), Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me falls 4-5 (43,000 units; down 10%) and Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album dips 5-6 (40,000 units; down 3%). The Weeknd’s compilation The Highlights descends 6-7 with 40,000 units (up 2%).
Cole’s The Christmas Song rises 18-8 with 36,000 equivalent album units (up 58%). The album, which includes such seasonal favorites like the title track and “O Holy Night,” peaked at No. 6 two holiday seasons ago, on the Jan. 2, 2021-dated chart. Harry Styles’ chart-topping Harry’s House falls 8-9 with 35,000 units (up 5%). Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack jumps 17-10 with 33,000 units (up 45%). The seasonal set peaked at No. 6 nearly a year ago on the Jan. 1, 2022-dated list.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Powfu unveiled his nine-song debut album, Surrounded by Hounds and Serpents, on Friday (Dec. 2), and to celebrate the release, the 23-year-old star sat down with Billboard‘s Rania Aniftos to discuss his musical journey.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“My first memory was walking into the living room, and my parents bought me a drum set,” he shares of when he first started getting into music and how he was inspired by his father, who is also a musician. “When I was 12, that’s when I really started trying to write stuff and I was into poetry a lot. My dad built a studio beside our house, so I would go in there and watch him make music. I stole a microphone from my dad, took it into my bedroom and downloaded GarageBand. I just got addicted to it, basically. Then I started getting numbers pretty quick.”
After blowing up on TikTok with the success of his 2020 Beabadoobee collab, “Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head),” Powfu has been continuously putting out music, even dropping a punk rock version of Taylor Swift‘s Speak Now hit, “Mine.” “I really like Taylor Swift. I think she’s awesome,” he says.
Of his new album title, he explains, “In my life, there’s a lot of people that I met that are fake or only want you for the wrong reasons. Over the years, I think I’ve gotten better at being weary and looking at my surroundings and spotting out who those people are.”
Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Powfu above.
Taylor Swift’s Midnights spends a fourth nonconsecutive week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Dec. 3) as it holds atop the list with 177,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 24 (down 13%), according to Luminate.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Also in the new Billboard 200’s top 10: Michael Jackson’s former No. 1 Thriller returns to the region after its 40th anniversary reissue, vaulting 115-7; Rod Wave’s new Jupiter’s Diary: 7 Day Theory bows at No. 9; and Michael Bublé’s chart-topping Christmas jingles its way back to the top 10 with a 19-10 climb.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Dec. 3, 2022-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Nov. 29. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of Midnights’ 177,000 equivalent album units earned, SEA units comprise 118,000 (down 16%, equaling 155.8 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks), album sales comprise 57,000 (down 4%) and SEA units comprise 2,000 (down 49%).
Four former No. 1’s follow Swift on the new Billboard 200, as Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss is a non-mover at No. 2 (119,000 equivalent album units; down 30%), Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti is steady at No. 3 (56,000; up less than 1%), Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me is also stationary at No. 4 (48,000; down 9%) and Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album rises 6-5 (42,000; up 2%).
Jackson’s former No. 1 Thriller returns to the top 10, jumping from No. 115 to No. 7 after it was reissued in celebration of its 40th anniversary. It earned 37,000 equivalent album units (up 283%). Of that sum, album sales comprise 27,500 (up 820%), SEA units comprise 9,000 (equaling 13.17 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks) and TEA units comprise 500.
Thriller spent 37 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1983-84 — the most weeks at No. 1 for an album by a singular artist. The only album with more weeks at No. 1 is the soundtrack to the film West Side Story, with 54 weeks in 1962-63.
Thriller was last in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 on the June 30, 1984-dated chart, when it ranked at No. 8. During its initial chart run, its last week on the list was April 20, 1985. It didn’t return to the list until Dec. 5, 2009, when the chart began allowing catalog (older) albums to chart again. (From May of 1991 through November 2009, catalog albums were generally not allowed to chart on the Billboard 200.)
For its 40th anniversary, Thriller was reissued in a variety of new configurations and formats, some with additional bonus tracks. All versions of the album, old and new, are combined together for tracking and charting purposes. Thriller has seen a few high-profile reissues in the past, including a remastered “special edition” in 2001 with previously unreleased bonus tracks and a 25th anniversary edition in 2008 with an unreleased song and new remix collaborations with Akon, Fergie, Kanye West and will.i.am.
Harry Styles’ former leader Harry’s House rises 9-8 on the new Billboard 200 with 33,000 equivalent album units (up 10%).
Rod Wave’s new eight-song Jupiter’s Diary: 7 Day Theory debuts at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 with nearly 31,000 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, SEA units comprise a little more than 30,000 (equaling 43.32 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks), while album sales and TEA units comprise the remaining units. It’s the fifth consecutive and total top 10-charting album for the artist, and follows a pair of No. 1s in Beautiful Mind (2022) and SoulFly (2021).
Rounding out the new top 10 is Bublé’s former No. 1 Christmas, which rises 19-10 with 31,000 equivalent album units (up 51%%). The set was originally released in 2011 and spent five weeks at No. 1 in late 2011 and early 2012. It has returned to the top 10 in every Christmas season since.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
Taylor Swift’s Midnights returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated Nov. 26) for a third nonconsecutive week on top, as the set rebounds 2-1 in its fourth week on the list. It earned 204,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 17 (down 32%), according to Luminate. The album spent its first two weeks atop the list, then stepped aside for one week when Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss bowed at No. 1.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Midnights is the first album to earn at least 200,000 units in each of its first four weeks of release since Adele’s 25 saw its first six weeks reach 200,000-plus (Dec. 12, 2015–Jan. 16, 2016).
Also in the new Billboard 200’s top 10: Louis Tomlinson lands his highest charting album with the No. 5 debut of Faith in the Future, Bruce Springsteen achieves his 22nd top 10-charting effort with the No. 8 arrival of Only the Strong Survive, and Nas captures his 16th top 10 with King’s Disease III’s bow at No. 10.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Nov. 26, 2022-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Tuesday (Nov. 22). For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Of Midnights’ 204,000 equivalent album units earned, SEA units comprise 140,000 (down 19%, equaling 184.04 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks), album sales comprise 60,000 (down 36%) and SEA units comprise 4,000 (down 88%).
After debuting at No. 1, Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss falls to No. 2 in its second week with 170,000 equivalent album units earned (down 58%). Two fellow former No. 1s are next on the list, as Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti rises 4-3 (56,000; down 3%) and Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me dips 3-4 (52,000; down 15%).
Tomlinson’s second solo album, Faith in the Future, debuts at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, securing the pop artist his highest-charting effort and his best week yet in terms of both equivalent album units earned (43,000) and traditional album sales (37,500). It surpasses his previous high-water mark, logged with the No. 9 debut and peak of his first album Walls (Feb. 15, 2020, chart; 39,000 units — of which album sales comprised 35,000).
As album sales comprise 37,500 of Faith’s total first-week units, the remainder consists of SEA units (5,500; equaling 7.27 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks) and a negligible amount of TEA units.
Faith’s first-week sales figure was bolstered by its availability across multiple collectible physical variants of the album. The set was preceded by the single “Bigger Than Me,” which became Tomlinson’s fourth solo hit on the Pop Airplay chart (outside his tenure in One Direction).
Morgan Wallen’s chart-topping Dangerous: The Double Album is a non-mover on the Billboard 200 at No. 6 (41,000 equivalent album units earned; down 1%) while The Weeknd’s The Highlights is also steady at No. 7 (40,000; up 2%).
Springsteen achieves his 22 nd top 10-charting album on the Billboard 200 as his new covers set, Only the Strong Survive, debuts at No. 8 with 39,500 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, traditional album sales comprise 36,500, SEA units comprise 2,000 (equaling 2.87 million on-demand streams of the set’s tracks) and TEA units comprise 1,000. The soul and R&B covers collection includes Springsteen’s takes on such oldies as The Commodores’ “Night Shift,” Jimmy Ruffin’s “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” and Diana Ross & The Supremes’ “Someday We’ll Be Together.”
With a 22nd top 10 album on the Billboard 200, Springsteen now solely has the eighth-most top 10s overall and the sixth-most top 10s among solo artists.
Here’s an updated look at all the acts with at least 20 top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 from March 24, 1956, when the list began publishing on a regular, weekly basis, through the latest chart, dated Nov. 26, 2022.
Most Billboard 200 Top 10s:37, The Rolling Stones34, Barbra Streisand32, The Beatles32, Frank Sinatra27, Elvis Presley23, Bob Dylan23, Madonna22, Bruce Springsteen21, Elton John21, Paul McCartney/Wings21, George Strait20, Prince
(Notably, the Kidz Bop Kids music brand has collected 24 top 10s, in 2005-16, with its series of kid-friendly covers of hit singles. The franchise’s early albums were performed by mostly anonymous studio singers, although later releases focused on branding named talent.)
Harry Styles’ former No. 1 Harry’s House drops 8-9 on the new Billboard 200 with 30,000 equivalent album units (down less than 1%).
Nas rounds out the top 10 as his latest release King’s Disease III starts at No. 10 with 29,000 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, SEA units comprise 20,000 (equaling 26.47 million on-demand official streams of the set’s tracks), album sales comprise 8,500 and TEA units comprise 500.
King’s Disease III is the third in the King’s Disease series — the first two albums debuted and peaked at Nos. 5 and 3 in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
King’s Disease III marks Nas’ 16th top 10 on the Billboard 200, tying him with Jay-Z for the most top 10s among rap artists. Nas’ first top 10 came with It Was Written in 1996 (No. 1 for four weeks). Jay-Z logged his first top 10 in 1997 with In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (No. 3) and last notched a new top 10 set with 4:44 in 2017 (No. 1 for two weeks).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
How did Taylor Swift‘s 2023 Eras tour presale turn so calamitous? Ticketmaster service delays and website crashes outraged fans trying to buy tickets to the superstar’s 2023 tour this week, causing widespread outcry and condemnation for the ticket service as high up as Congress. And, finally, on Thursday (Nov. 17), company officials announced they had decided to cancel the general ticket sale scheduled for Friday — blaming a surge of unregistered fans and billions of bots for the failure.
Fans already bought up more than 90% of the ticketing inventory on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Ticketmaster, breaking the record Tuesday for the most tickets ever sold in a single day by a touring artist at 2 million. But with that success came catastrophe. More than 3.5 million fans registered for the chance to buy Swift tickets, and 1.5 million were invited to participate in Tuesday’s ticket sale for a crack at seats on the 52-date tour. Company officials say, however, it wasn’t pre-registered fans buying tickets who caused the crash on Tuesday, but that tens of millions of uninvited fans and billions of bots trying to access the sale early were to blame.
A Wednesday presale for Capital One card holders again brought a second unreported massive traffic of traffic to the site, as millions of fans — most without presale codes or an invitation — again tried to flood the presale meant only for a few hundred thousand card holders.
With little inventory left and even bigger crowds expected Friday, on Thursday Ticketmaster and Swift’s team decided to cancel the final onsale. It’s unclear how the remaining ticketing inventory will be distributed or sold. Meanwhile, the bad press has brought unwanted attention to the ticket giant.
Earlier Thursday, in an open letter to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, argued that “Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services,” resulting in “dramatic service failures,” like the crash of Tuesday’s Taylor Swift sale.
Hours after the letter surfaced, Ticketmaster published a blog on its website offering an in-depth explanation of what caused the Swift presale to crash. Ticketmaster’s explanation for the crash — that it misjudged demand for presale tickets and was ill-prepared for the millions of fans that tried to log in — is not likely to satisfy Klobuchar and the bi-partisan criticism that the company is cutting corners due to it’s massive marketshare in the concert space.
According to Ticketmaster, about 3.5 million fans pre-registered for Taylor’s Verified Fan program — “the largest registration in history,” the company’s blog claims. The huge amount of demand “informed the artist team’s decision to add additional dates” to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour earlier this month, increasing the number of shows on sale from 26 to 52 stadium shows — 47 of which would be ticketed by Ticketmaster.
Despite doubling the number of shows that it was now selling tickets for, Ticketmaster didn’t increase the window of time it would need to process the large uptick in volume. That meant that instead of having 11 East Coast shows go on sale at the same time (10 a.m. EST), Ticketmaster was now putting 21 shows on sales at once.
Making matters worse, far more people showed up to buy tickets than was expected. On Monday night, the day before the presale, Ticketmaster sent out invitations to 1.5 million fans who had signed up for the presale with instruction on how to purchase tickets. “Historically, around 40% of invited fans actually show up and buy tickets,” according to Ticketmaster’s blog post, meaning Ticketmaster was only expecting about 600,000 people to actually try to log in. Not only did far more invitees show up, millions more uninvited guests tried to crash the party. Ticketmaster estimates that with uninvited guests and massive armies of bots, about 3.5 billion requests were made requesting access to the presale, causing the system to meltdown.
Company officials ended up having to do what they probably should have done in the first place — pushing back the remaining sales to give the Ticketmaster team more time to deal with the traffic issues and high demand. About 15% of fans attempting to buy Swift tickets experienced some type of disruption while trying to buy tickets or were unable to do so because of the site crash, according to the Ticketmaster blog. Still, the company did sell more than 2 million tickets that day — the most ever sold for a single artist in a day — and Ticketmaster has agreed to not allow Swift tickets to be sold on any of the secondary resale sites it controls, restricting markups to fans on its service.
Those hoping to snag tickets for Taylor Swift‘s 2023 Eras Tour during Friday’s public on-sale got some bad news on Thursday (Nov. 17), when Ticketmaster announced that it has since been canceled.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled,” the ticketing service tweeted.
Due to extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand, tomorrow’s public on-sale for Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour has been cancelled.— Ticketmaster (@Ticketmaster) November 17, 2022
The cancellation is just the latest in a string of messy circumstances surrounding ticket sales for Swift’s highly anticipated tour. On Tuesday (Nov. 15), after an unprecedented number of fans went to Ticketmaster with presale codes in the hopes of buying tickets, Ticketmaster’s website experienced mass outages and extreme delays that caused some to wait for several hours in a virtual queue, just to walk away empty handed.
Ticketmaster then shared a statement shortly after 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday, about three hours after the East Coast venue presales began, noting that the company wasn’t prepared for the “historically” large demand for tickets, and postponed presales for West Coast venues and Capitol One cardholders scheduled for later that same day.
The wild demand for Eras Tour tickets had been apparent even leading up to the ticket sale, leading the “All Too Well” pop star to add 25 additional shows to her 27 original dates in the past couple weeks. Swift hasn’t hit the road since 2018, when she toured in support of her album, Reputation. She had planned to go out again after dropping 2019’s Lover for a series of stadium shows she dubbed Lover Fest, but the gigs were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zoë Kravitz spilled the tea in a new interview about quarantining during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic with none other than Taylor Swift.
“She was my pod,” the actress told GQ of hunkering down with the superstar and her boyfriend Joe Alwyn as she filmed Matt Reeves’ The Batman in the U.K. “She was a very important part of being in London, just having a friend that I could see and that would make me home-cooked meals and dinner on my birthday.”
For her part, Swift had equally nice things to say about her pal, telling the magazine via email, “Zoë’s sense of self is what makes her such an exciting artist, and such an incredible friend. She has this very honest inner compass, and the result is art and life without compromising who she is.”
Part of that art included the duo collaborating on music, with Kravitz credited with co-writing and providing backing vocals on the opaque Midnights opener “Lavender Haze.” (The actress also sang backup on bonus cut “Glitch” from Midnights [3am Edition].)
When The Batman was released, Swift cheered on her friend in the role of Selina Kyle. “@zoeisabellakravitz IS THE CATWOMAN OF DREAMS,” the “Anti-Hero” singer wrote on her Instagram Stories at the time. “The Batman was PHENOMENAL!!!”
And though it has yet to officially see the light of day, Kravitz has already confirmed that, in addition to contributing to Midnights, she’s also recorded her debut solo album with Tay’s trusty producer of choice Jack Antonoff, which she described as feeling “vulnerable” and “a little scary.”
Read Kravitz’s full GQ interview here.