No, seriously, Taylor Swift could be a bigger deal after ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

There is sweat on your forehead. You start to feel your heart beating faster. The acrobatics you feel in your stomach are enough to make you a little nauseous. You get a little wobbly at the knees as anxiety, stress and anticipation ripple through every limb of your body.

No, you will not be sick; you have Taylor Swift album release fever. And you are not alone.

Swifties know the feeling because they’ve been through it before, and will do it again with the release of Swift’s 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” out Friday. What’s different this time: Swift – the record-breaker, the new face of NFL broadcasting and the touring machine that turned the government’s eye on Ticketmaster – doesn’t have much left to prove. Not that it dampens anyone’s excitement.

“This is probably the most anticipated album I’ve ever seen in my career,” Tom Poleman, chief programming officer & president for iHeartRadio, told CNN in a recent interview. “It’s not just a music event, it’s a pop culture event that I think everyone in America will talk about and celebrate together.”

“Tortured Poets” is Swift’s latest album after 2022’s “Midnights” and 2023’s “1989 (Taylor’s Version).” Both albums broke so many streaming, sales and chart records that listing them all would not only be readable, but in the larger scheme of their success, the statistic and the term “record breaking” almost start to lose meaning. Imagine that: Being so successful that your success is a bit boring. (Disclaimer: The term “record breaking” will still pop up a lot throughout this story.)

It’s hard to imagine how Swift’s achievements can be measured at this point. A major record label executive with nearly two decades of experience, who declined to be named so he could speak candidly, said for an artist like Swift, achieving “huge commercial success” is just as important as conversation with and engagement with fans.

“It’s like in the movies, it’s like James Cameron who cares about quality, cares about credibility but also cares about commercial success,” he said.

“Tortured Poet” came during an unprecedented moment of success for Swift that was the result of both intentional and unintentional circumstances. The album’s performance will answer whether there is any ceiling to Swift’s achievements, or prove that for an artist of her caliber, there is such a thing as flying so high you can’t see the top.

Proven track record
In an industry that has had to change its own bar for success in the past 15 years or so – mostly due to the rise of music streaming – Swift is a rarity in that she has succeeded in both putting up massive streaming numbers and at the same time sold millions of physical copies of his albums. He’s in incredible company.

For fans of those stats, let’s dig deeper: Both “Midnights” and “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Swift marked her biggest selling week for an album in the US of her entire career when “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” sold nearly 1.4 million copies in its first week. He also became the most-streamed artist in a single day on Apple Music and Spotify with “Midnights,” according to data the music streaming platform provided to CNN.

“He has both markets damned,” Keith Caulfield, managing director of chart & data operations at Billboard, told CNN in an interview. “At his core, people are still very interested and very invested in the music and art that he creates. He’s not just a celebrity. He’s also a very respected musician and artist that fans love to engage with.”

If there was a stronger word for love, we’d use it here to describe the ways Swifties most truly engage with her content, from constantly seeing so-called Easter eggs in her work to reflecting on her dating life to following the “exclusive secret sessions” she throws .

“He’s very in tune with how his audience engages with him,” Poleman said. “He has a plan for every different aspect of how he can connect with his audience and I think that comes from him being like his audience. He lives life their way, and I think that makes him very relatable.”

For the most part, Swift’s rollout of “Tortured Poet” was quieter than past album releases — if mannouncing your new album at the Grammys can be considered quiet. But the superstar did not release a single or a music video, as is customary when promoting an album. Sometimes, one can argue, doing less says everything.

The beauty of being Swift is that you don’t have to follow any rulebook. With so much momentum behind him, he’s one of the few artists who can get away with a pared-down album release and still make an impact ve decision.

“I think he’s going to break the internet,” Poleman said.

The turning point
While “Midnights” and “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” are among Swift’s most commercially successful works, it was her 2020 album “Folklore” that was the turning point in her career that set the stage for the moment she finds herself in now.

It’s a time of evolution for Swift, perhaps best showcased by what she wrote on her Instagram page when she announced the pandemic-era album.

“Before this year, I probably thought too much about when to release this music at the ‘perfect’ time, but the times we live in constantly remind me that nothing is guaranteed,” he wrote at the time. “My destiny told me that if you make something you love, you have to put it out into the world.”

Trusting her gut paid off.

Swift’s rise in profile following “Folklore” was welcomed after her 2019 album “Lover” spent just one week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Of course, a week at No. 1 for any artist is a feat, but it’s a short period of time compared to most of Swift’s previous studio albums that spent at least four weeks or more in the top spot.

“Folklore,” on the other hand, spent 11 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and won her third album Grammy of the year at the time. It is still considered one of his greatest works.

To fans and insiders alike, “Folklore” also ushered in Swift’s play-by-her-own-rules era. In 2019, he committed to re-recording his first six studio albums after Scooter Braun acquired the rights to his master recordings from his former label. The one-two punch of Braun’s acquisition and the outbreak changed how Swift released her new album after that, starting with “Folklore.”

“I think all of those things are converging to potentially help inform how his career reaches new levels of success in a way that I don’t think people would ever expect,” Caulfield said.

After “Folklore,” he released a steady stream of both new music and albums of his own recordings. In almost three years he released five albums, all of which reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart at the time of their release.

“Since then, it’s been unprecedented. It’s been a rocket ship for him,” the record executive said.

Swift’s profile then rose to new heights when she announced her “Eras Tour,” her first tour since 2018 and her first chance to take the four studio albums she’s released since then — none of which have gotten their own individual tours — on the road.

The frenzy for tickets to the tour caused Ticketmaster to crash at the time, which then sparked congressional hearings in which lawmakers put its parent company Live Nation in the hot seat over its inability to process orders.

Those who managed to get tickets, however, experienced a celebration of Swift’s hits from her nearly 18-year career that bridged generations.

“All these factors combined have put him in this space that no other artist has been,” the record executive said. “He’s in this place where no other artist has the ability to touch this many generations and it stems from ‘Folklore’.”

However, when it comes down to it, Swift has said time and time again that making music is just something she loves to do.

“I feel good when I finish a song or when I crack the code for a bridge that I like,” Swift said in February while accepting a Grammy for album of the year (her fourth). “For me, the award is the work.”

Said the record-breaking Grammy winner very well.