Taylor Swift's 'Folklore' sets streaming records, sells over 1.3 million worldwide in under 24 hours
We won't know exactly how many units Taylor Swift's new album, "Folklore," sold for another week, but it's off to a smashing start.
After its release on Friday, "Folklore" had already sold more than 1.3 million units worldwide in less than 24 hours.
It also set a new Spotify global record for first-day album streams by a female artist, with just under 81 million streams. The project, Swift's eighth, was also the most-streamed pop album on Apple Music over its first 24 hours, with just under 35.5 million streams.
In addition, "Folklore" has garnered the best reviews of any other album of Swift's career: On Metacritic, it has a ranking of 93 as of Saturday night. All of her previous albums are ranked anywhere from 79 to 71.
Meanwhile, fans who theorized the "Folklore" song "betty" was named after Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively's third daughter -- who arrived last year but whose name has never been publicly revealed -- may be right.
People magazine says that, according to a "source with knowledge of the situation," Betty is indeed the name of the couple's daughter, who was born in October. Speculation over the name began not only because Swift is good friends with Reynolds and Lively, but because the song "betty" features two other characters named Inez and James -- the names of the couple's other two daughters.
That's not the only real person who apparently inspired one of the songs on "Folklore," though. "Last Great American Dynasty" is believed to be about socialite Rebekah Harkness, who previously owned Taylor's mansion located in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Harkness died in 1982.
