SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – MARCH 02: EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO BOOK COVERS Taylor Swift performs during … [+] “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at the National Stadium on March 02, 2024 in Singapore. Taylor Swift stopped promoting her 2023 album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) months ago, but somehow, “Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” is still a radio hit to this day. (Photo by Ashok Kumar/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)
Taylor Swift stopped promoting her 2023 album 1989 (Taylor’s Version) months ago. The singer largely refocused her energy on her even-newer project The Tortured Poets Department once it was released in April. In the months since, the singles from that set have pretty much come and gone, but one track from her older effort is holding on in a rare showing.
“Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” is still a hit on the charts in America this week, many months after it was first released. The tune can be found on one of Billboard’s radio rankings, as it continues to rack up enough plays to compete with much newer, more exciting tracks.
Swift’s remake of her former Hot 100 leader “Bad Blood” is living on the Adult Contemporary chart. The track has now been hanging on somewhere on the ranking of the most successful cuts at AC radio across the U.S. for 22 nonconsecutive weeks.
“Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” isn’t just carving out space on the tally, either. This week, it returns to its all-time peak of No. 25, performing as well as it ever has on the roster.
It’s not necessarily uncommon for older tracks to appear on a Billboard chart or two. Sometimes, fans of one musician–or perhaps just the tune itself–keep buying or streaming a song in large enough quantities that it’s able to find space on one list or another. Something different is happening with Swift’s track.
For any tune to appear on one of Billboard’s radio lists, those in positions of power at stations throughout the country need to continue to put the song into rotation. These decisions usually aren’t fan-voted, though requests do still play some role in a title possibly being played more than it might otherwise.
The fact that “Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” is still charting months after Swift stopped promoting the album it’s featured on is notable. What makes the song’s success even more amazing is the fact that it was seemingly never promoted as a single. 1989 (Taylor’s Version) did push a handful of tunes as proper focus tracks, but it seems that “Bad Blood (Taylor’s Version)” has managed to stand out all on its own, attracting continued attention from radio DJs and programmers throughout the nation, month after month.
