Pop queens Beyonce and Taylor Swift plot their next global takeover with new album drops
The Queen of Country appears to have anointed Beyonce’s sashay into Nashville on her upcoming new record, revealing the Texas Hold ‘Em star may have covered one of her biggest hits.
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It is entertaining to imagine Taylor Swift and Beyonce finessing the finer details of their 2024 global chart takeover while hurling popcorn at the big screen.
As the two pop powerbrokers perched in the front row during the Eras Tour concert film premiere in Los Angeles last October for a secret photo op, Swift probably told her Break My Soul mate she had yet another new record ready to go.
As it turned out, so did Beyonce, whose new country album will feature a hit Dolly Parton song.
It is wholly unsurprising these savvy cultural influencers would have dictated to their labels when their respective albums would drop, so as to give each other’s works the space to claim all of the No. 1s.
By the time Swift walked the red carpet at the London premiere of Beyonce’s Renaissance concert film in late November, the “deal” would have been done.
Beyonce goes first on March 26 with her countrified Renaissance Act II record while Swift follows on April 19 with The Tortured Poets Department.
The timing will inevitably fire up Tay V Bey examinations of the two bodies of work despite the Shake It Off superstar’s protests about the pair’s endeavours being compared.
“There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyonce,” Swift told Time Magazine during her Person of the Year interview last year.
“Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.”
Swift may not want the “discussion” but she cannot avoid the ongoing examination of the cultural differences in their stellar careers.
ALBUMS
The career trajectories of Taylor Swift and Beyonce have been inextricably linked since that controversial 2009 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony when Kanye West scandalously stormed the stage to protest You Belong With Me winning Best Female Video from Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It).
The artists would not go head to head in an awards year again, releasing their albums in different yearly cycles, until 2022 when Beyonce’s seventh record Renaissance dropped in July and Swift’s 10th studio opus Midnights debuted in October.
The Cruel Summer songwriter created history in February to be the first artist to win a fourth Album of the Year at the Grammys.
Both artists’ solo careers have straddled the rapidly changing music delivery landscape of the past two decades which now incorporates sales across physical formats (vinyl, CD and cassette), digital downloads and streaming.
According to ChartMaster which crunches all of the formats across singles, albums and music videos, Swift has achieved “equivalent album sales” over her 18-year recording career of more than 195 million.
Beyonce has generated 99,825,000 equivalent album sales but if you also consider her Destiny’s Child catalogue, that adds another 51 million EAS to her career total.
The Queen of Country Dolly Parton appears to have anointed Beyonce’s sashay into Nashville on her upcoming new record, revealing the Texas Hold ‘Em star may have covered her signature song Jolene.
Parton was asked about the rumoured collaboration while celebrating the opening of the 2024 season of her theme park Dollywood.
The music legend gushed about Bey and said she believes Jolene, in some form, will make an appearance on the countrified Renaissance Act II album out in two weeks.
“Well, I think she has! I think she’s recorded Jolene and I think it’s probably gonna be on her country album, which I’m very excited about that,” Parton told Knox News.
Jolene has been covered widely with popular versions by Parton’s god-daughter Miley Cyrus and our late national treasure Olivia Newton-John.
Parton said she has long admired Beyonce, calling her a “beautiful girl and great singer.”
The 78-year-old said the pair had exchanged messages over the years.
“We’ve kind of sent messages back and forth through the years. And she and her mother were like fans, and I was always touched that they were fans, and I always thought she was great,” Parton said.
THE BIG REVEAL
Both artists don’t just “announce” a new record; they turn the big reveal into a global event.
Swift used the Grammys winner podium as she collected the Best Pop Vocal Album for her Midnights to casually drop she would be releasing The Tortured Poets Department in April.
About 17 million American viewers watched the announce during the awards telecast with gazillions more catching the news via social media.
A week later, Beyonce chose the Superbowl, being played by Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce, to “break the internet” with a Verizon halftime ad teasing her album news, broadcast to a whopping 123 million Americans and bazillions more worldwide via social media.
She followed up minutes later with a teaser video and two new singles Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages, with the former celebrating two weeks at No. 1 on the US charts.
Swift followed up her album news by revealing three “variants” at concerts in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore which fans could pre-order during a four-day window.
The four versions each feature one different bonus track. Fans were not happy, accusing the artist and her team of a cash grab in the middle of a cost of living crisis and demanded one deluxe version of the record featuring all the bonus tracks.
The only thing missing from their repertoire is a Beyonce / Taylor Swift collaboration.
TOURS
The Eras Tour is believed to be the highest grossing world tour of all time, busting the ceiling of more than $1 billion in ticket sales for its 60 shows last year.
Swift isn’t reporting her ticket sales or earnings per show to Billboard, Pollstar or other live music industry trade publications so the tour’s actual earnings are rough estimates until the two-year run winds up in Vancouver on December 8.
Beyonce’s Renaissance World Tour – which didn’t actually tour the world – reported gross ticket earnings of more than $880 million for 56 shows.
Speculation continues that she is in talks to book a Las Vegas residency at the state-of-the-art Sphere venue which was opened by U2.
HOLLYWOOD
Like the great pop disrupters they are, the two pop stars bypassed the powerful Hollywood machine of studios and distributors to ink direct deals with cinema chain AMC for their concert films.
Swift set a new box office record for music movies with the Eras Tour concert doco raking in more than $400 million worldwide.
The Karma star was reportedly paid more than $115 million from Disney for the streaming rights ahead of its premiere on Disney+ on March 15.
Beyonce’s Renaissance film was also a box office success, making more than $68 million worldwide. She is yet to confirm when it will land of streaming or which platform. Both concert movies were made by the artists’ own film production arms.
As for their non-concert film repertoire, Beyonce has more than 10 credits including scene-stealing roles in Austin Powers, Dream Girls and The Lion King.
Meanwhile, Swift has five Hollywood roles including Valentine’s Day, Amsterdam and (cough) Cats.
CULTURE
While friendship bracelets and surprise song mashups are guaranteed to continue to be a thing with the Eras Tour hitting Europe and the US this year, Beyonce has brought back line-dancing.
With no singles issued ahead of the album release, we have no hint of The Tortured Poet Department’s musical direction beyond its song titles and featured vocalists (Post Malone and Florence and the Machine).
So whether Swift is heading into new sonic territory remains to be heard but it’s unlikely she’s coming into her Metal or Opera eras.
But Beyonce signalled a dramatic shift with the wildly popular single Texas Hold ‘Em which has more than 124 million Spotify streams since its release a month ago.
Outside of music, the two culture powerbrokers have made significant flexes in recent weeks, with Swift posting a call out for fans to enrol to vote for this year’s US elections and Beyonce launching her people of colour-focused hair care range Cécred (pronounced sacred).
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