Taylor Swift Is Bringing Vinyl Back

Midnights just broke another record, helping push vinyl sales past CD sales in the UK for the first time since the 1980s and earning the title as the highest-selling vinyl album of the 21st century. In other words, Swifties are writing history.

The October release has already broken more than 80 records. There are the usual suspects, like garnering the most streams in the first day 184.6 million streams in 24 hours and becoming the first artist to monopolize the top 10 in a single week. Swift also contributed to the long-running revival of the physical record. Midnights made her the only artist in history to have five albums sell over a million units during its first week, moving over 1.6 million units right off the bat and 6 million within two months, including 575,000 vinyl LPs in the album’s first week of release.

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Since then, the loyal Swifties have not lost sight of their mission, making Midnights the biggest-selling vinyl record of the century in the U.K. and pushing the annual sales of vinyl albums above the CD for the first time since 1987 – when the best-selling albums were Bad by Michael Jackson, the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing and Appetite For Destruction by Guns N’ Roses.

How did she do it? A magician never reveals her secret, but the true magic behind Swift’s music (read: magic) is held in the millions of hands (and tweet-firing fingers) of the Swifties.

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Swift issued Midnights in four color-coded CD and vinyl editions, limited not by quantity but by time, releasing pre-orders for the unique covers between August and September for one week at a time. Colors include Moonstone Blue, Jade Green, Blood Moon,and Mahogany. With more overlap between the Pokemon and Taylor Swift fanbase than you would expect, true Swifties vowed to catch them all.

The ticking clock resounded across TikTok as Swifties flocked to lay their claim to the collectibles.

With the 2022 popularization of antiquated aesthetics like coquette, Swift’s nostalgia fits squarely within the trend gravitating toward artifacts of a time gone by, like the vinyl that was once threatened by streaming services. Swift's domination of both seems to prove that the two can not only coexist, but be capitalized on.

Photo courtesy of BFA/ Jason Sean Weiss