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Your views (and mine and everybody's elses) are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if they change or not. You can spend the rest of your life posting how you feel that Taylor Swift is not "that" popular or how her hits are really not that known on Chartmaster. The thing is numbers are numbers, facts are facts and like the user said, Taylor is coming for Madonna's sales.
"Most of Taylor’s songs flop on charts outside few countries." Very few countries outside of North America/Europe have music charts so i'm not sure what you mean by this
Taylor Swift ‘Eras Tour’ Film Tipped To Reach Record $100M Opening Weekend Imagine if she seemed bigger!
"I don’t think she reached Madonnas fame let alone MJ as her fans claim."
Fortunately we have polls for this, fame in the US:
Taylor 98%
MJ 97%
UK:
MJ 98%
Taylor 96%
Outside of these countries, MJ is more famous in Europe and Latin America but Taylor is more famous in Asia which is much more populated. Overall it seems likely she's more famous than him and Madonna.
"But Midnights seems to be her Ray of Light moment just when it seemed her popularity was waning."
I dunno about that comparison, IFPI rankings for Taylor:
2017 #3
2019 #1
2020 #2
2021 #2
2022 #1
It seems different than Madonna's quieter period during the 90s.
I think you mean unbiased. Flipping it back to you or Taylor fans, surely there is no way you can even give a view on Madonnas fame in her prime, as you didn't experience it.
Whereas I can give a view on both, having witnessed both, regardless of how biased you think it may be.
As I said to begin with, due to the limited media options back in the 80s, in the UK specifically, a wider demographic was watching and listening to the same TV channels and Radio stations and seeing and hearing the same programmes. This lead to a wider age demographic being aware of the same things. I just don't think that is the case anymore, acts like Taylor can totally pass people by these days, whereas back in the day, it was very hard to escape some news item about MJ or Madonna or their latest hit.
"surely there is no way you can even give a view on Madonnas fame in her prime, as you didn’t experience it"
So how much more famous do you think Madonna was? Do you think 130% of people knew about her? 150% maybe?
That's interesting. Based on that percentage Madonna's sales should be close to 560m.
But you do know who Taylor Swift is and you also know her hits. There's no way you don't after spending your days on this article. We also know that her level of fame in the UK (Your home country) is around 96% based on YouGov studies. That's pretty much as famous and ubiquitous as one can get with the amount of media options available compared to the few TV channels you had back in the 90's. She's also charting multiple albums every week in the Top 20, sold out six Wembley Stadiums like it was nothing (something Madonna in her prime never did btw and as a soloist only MJ did more) and has nearly 2m monthly listeners from London on Spotify. You talk about her hits not being known but your parents and grandparents didn't know a lot of Madonna songs either when she was in her prime. You were in your late teens or 20's so obviously they are more recognizable to you.
Look, I understand your argument but I genuinely want to know why you're making it and I have a hard time believing it's not personal. Madonna was a massive phenomenon but so is Taylor which is why she's challenging her place as the Top Female artist of all-time. I mean, next month The Eras Tour is going to shatter cinema records. How much bigger does she need to be for you to admit she's that big. 5 more Wembley's? 1m more listeners in London? Another 20m seller? I just don't get it.
To be honest I know the names of a few of her hits but as said before, somewhere else on here, the only one I recognise is that We Are Never Getting Back Together. I've heard titles like Blank Space, Cruel Summer and Antihero but I have no idea what they sound like.
Speaking from experience my mum and step dad knew of her and her songs and knew stuff about her, even my grandparents, alrhough more my grandmother, who knew a few of her songs and used tut at her, shall we say risqué behaviour, when she saw videos or things about her on TV or read about her in the papers. None of it was my doing, other than maybe having Top of the pops on and us all seeing it, I mean I didn't even listen to her, I was heavily into metal and hard rock in the 80s, it was just through coming across her on mainstream TV, in the tabloids, on TV news etc.
The yougov fame is just knowing the name, so it really doesn't tell us much, just that people have heard of someone or something, it doesn't really tell us how much they know about someone or something, popularity would probably be a better figure to look at and she is the 87th most popular all time music artist, with 55%.
It's not personal. Beyond looking at her success through this site, seeing the odd news article and knowing some titles of her music, she genuinely has passed me by over the past 15 or so years. I also used to work in the music industry, until around 2011, in licensing, publishing and copyright and then again In distribution in 2016/2017, so I was aware of contemporary stuff but somehow as I say, her music just never became that known to me.
"popularity would probably be a better figure to look at and she is the 87th most popular all time music artist, with 55%."
And Madonna is at 44%...
Someone who's known by 96% of people is obviously a giant superstar, your "feeling" that Madonna was "so much bigger than her" isn't supported by any fact so you should understand why people might question your intent here, especially since you said the same thing 2 months ago.
For God's sake, knowing a name is not the same as knowing about that person, knowing their music etc is it and why the hell would you be looking at Madonnas current popularity, that tells us absolutely nothing about her popularity or fame In the 80s!
Surely the fact that Taylor is in 87th place in with 55% popularity, backs up my claim, that her and her music is not as hugely popular in the UK, as elsewhere and that's it's quite a reasonable assumption to say that she hasnt had quite the impact on the UK public, that she has in other places and that her music has completely passed some people by.
Oh and I like how you conveniently mentioned their relative current popularity, because Taylors bettered Madonnas, yet failed to mention Madonnas current fame rating which sees her in 10th with 98%, down from 99% last quarter and currently 10 places above Taylor who is in 20th place!
