Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” music video is rich in not-so-subtle symbolism but also features at least one “easter egg,” revealing who is in and out of Taylor Swift’s squad.
It’s also a really good music video. The song, compared to highlights from 1989, isn’t as strong, but we cannot think of a Taylor Swift music video that can match it.
Apparently, the internet agrees — because “Look What You Made Me Do” is smashing records with a vengeance. It’s coming for you, next, “Despacito.”
Part of the power that Taylor Swift wields is that, even though “Look What You Made Me Do” is controversial and even hated by some people, it’s crushing records.
The video and the song, both.
So, whether you love Taylor’s comeback with a vengeance or you can’t stand her or fall somewhere in between (there really are some indifferent folks out there), it seems that nobody can ignore her work.
Let’s go through some of the milestones that “Look What You Made Me Do” has hit.
Most First-Day Lyrics Views:
Taylor Swift’s song, which came out at the end of last week, was accompanied by a lyrics video.
(Remember the old days, when you had to just hope that the physical CD that you’d bought included the lyrics in the cover packet? That was hell)
That lyrics video alone received 19 million views within its first 24 hours.
The previous record belonged to the song “Something Just Like This,” by the Chainsmokers and Coldplay.
(“Something Just Like This” is a great song but the lyrics are so unintelligible that I once wrote out my “best guess” based upon what I was hearing after dozens of listens, and it was nuts — so it’s no wonder that so many people looked up those lyrics)
It’s been less than a week since “Look What You Made Me Do” dropped, but as of 1pm on Thursday, the lyrics video has more than 50 million views.
Most First-Day Spotify Streams:
Music Business Worldwide reports that “Look What You Made Me Do” was streamed almost 8 million times during the first 24 hours after Taylor released her new single.
Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran are friends (he’s even part of her squad), but he was the previous record-holder (“Shape of You” got 7 million streams on its first day) and Taylor ground that record under her heel.
Keep in mind that Spotify streams are just one of many ways to listen to music.
They don’t take into account listens by those of us who bought the song on iTunes (you get that single automatically when you preorder the Reputation album).
It also doesn’t count radio plays, all of the people listening on one video or another on YouTube, and of course the millions who immediately pirated the song.
Most Video Views During the First 24 Hours:
The “Look What You Made Me Do” music video was released during the VMAs on Sunday night.
It also got almost 30 million views during those first 24 hours.
Adele’s “Hello” got 27.7 views during its first day, which was all kinds of impressive.
But clearly Taylor Swift intends to reach ever upward.
As of 1pm on Thursday, not even four days after the video was released, the official “Look What You Made Me Do” music video on Taylor’s VEVO channel has over 78 million views.
Taylor also bested one of her personal records.
Taylor Swift’s Biggest YouTube Debut:
As you can imagine, Taylor’s previous personal best for a YouTube release was the music video for “Bad Blood.”
Despite Kendrick Lamar rapping over parts of the song, the star-studded music video was absolutely breathtaking.
It got an impressive 17 million views just during its first day.
Obviously, that doesn’t quite hold a candle to nearly 30 million views in the same time period.
Amazing that Taylor Swift at her current, “weakened” state is netting more views than she did when she was at the absolute height of her popularity.
We cannot wait to hear the rest of this album and see what other music videos she produces.
She’s set the bar pretty high.
Of course, if she wants to break the “Despacito” viewing record of 3.4 billion, Taylor will need all of the ambition that she has.
