Taylor Swift was gunning for a truly epic release week long before The Tortured Poets Department actually dropped, with the pop star surprising fans by unleashing 31 new songs — as opposed to the previously confirmed 16 main and four bonus tracks — in the span of two hours April 19

.

She’d been crafting the sprawling, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner-produced project for about two years before it finally arrived, with the singer telling fans at a February Eras Tour show that she’d been working on it since the moment she submitted the Billboard 200-topping Midnights to her label some time in 2022. The unavoidable news cycle about her breakups from longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn and The 1975’s Matty Healy, as well as her blossoming romance with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, only added fuel to the fire of hype leading up to Tortured Poets, which Swift further stoked by saying at another Eras concert, “I’ve never had an album where I needed songwriting more.”

Come April 19, and her inimitable lyricism, discourse-provoking songwriting and apparent allusions to the aforementioned relationships proved to be more than enough to make millions of listeners tune in, the 14-time Grammy winner smashing records left and right in the process. Before Tortured Poets even hit the Billboard charts, it was doing unprecedented numbers in streaming, sales and vinyl — not to mention selling 1.4 million copies in its first day on the market, according to Luminate — giving Swift’s peers a run for their money in more ways than one.