"Fortnight" is a song by the American singer-songwriter
Taylor Swift featuring the American rapper and singer
Post Malone, taken from Swift's eleventh studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. The two artists wrote the track with
Jack Antonoff, who produced it with Swift.
Republic Records released the song as the lead single concurrently with its parent album on April 19, 2024. A 1980s-inspired
downtempoelectropop and
synth-popballad, "Fortnight" is instrumented by a pulsing
synthbassline. Its lyrics see Swift's character in an unhappy marriage and becoming next-door neighbors with an ex-lover who is also married.
Music critics were divided on the song; some critics praised the vocal chemistry of Swift and Malone, but others considered the production insubstantial or weak. "Fortnight" broke the record for the
highest single-day streams for a song on the streaming platform
Spotify. In the United States, the song debuted atop the
Billboard Hot 100 with the highest single-week streaming figure since 2020, tying Swift as the female musician with the most number-one debuts. It earned Swift her fifth number-one single on the
Billboard Global 200 chart and peaked atop the charts in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, and the United Kingdom.
An accompanying music video for "Fortnight", directed by Swift, was released the same day as the single's release. It stars Swift, Malone, and the actors
Ethan Hawke and
Josh Charles. With a black-and-white cinematography, the video includes intertwining scenes of Swift in a psychiatric hospital, and Swift and Malone as lovers.
Background and release
Following the announcement of The Tortured Poets Department during Swift's
Grammy speech on February 5, 2024, she revealed "Fortnight" as the opening track of the tracklist shortly thereafter. The rapper and singer
Post Malone was announced as the track's guest feature.[1] The following day, he took to his
Instagram to share his excitement about the release and the collaboration.[2] During an interview with
Zane Lowe for
Apple Music 1, the singer complimented Swift and described her as "amazing" and "talented". According to him, Swift initiated the collaboration by simply "hitting him up". He then "rolled in the studio" and hung out with her, having a "good day" together.[3] At the time of the interview, Malone revealed that he had not heard the full song yet.[4] The track was released as the lead single from the album on April 19, 2024.[5]
Some American publications pointed to the fact that the title is a
British English noun meaning "two weeks".[16][17] The lyrics are about a woman's account of how she becomes a neighbor of an ex-lover, who is now married to another woman, while she herself is unhappily married.[6][18] That she lives next-door to her ex-lover makes her fantasize about killing the wife ("Your wife waters the flowers/ I want to kill her").[16] After the second verse, during the double chorus, Swift's character finds out about her husband's infidelity ("My husband is cheating/ I wanna kill him").[16] By the end, Malone's character, representing the ex-lover of Swift's character, sings about moving to Florida ("Thought of callin' ya, but you won't pick up/ 'Nother fortnight lost in America/ Move to Florida, buy the car you want/ But it won't start up till you touch, touch, touch me").[16]
In an album premiere special with
iHeartRadio, Swift shared that the single "really exhibits a lot of the common themes that run throughout [the album]", including "fatalism, longing, pining away, lost dreams".[19] She added, in a commentary for
Amazon Music, that "Fortnight" displayed "fatalistic" themes with hyperbolic and dramatic lyrics ("I love you, it's ruining my life"), which represented the album.[20]The New York Times' Lindsay Zoladz thought that the track is "chilly and controlled" until it "[thaws] and [glows]" after the lyric "I love you, it's ruining my life".[21]
In American Songwriter, Thom Donovan summed up the storyline as "a former love affair turning into a suburban nightmare".[16] Helen Brown of The Independent suggested that the lyrics were autobiographical.[22]Consequence's Mary Siroky opined that the lyrics had a heavy "air of death" ("I want to kill him"),[23] while USA Today's Melissa Ruggeri thought that they were "darkly funny" ("I was a functioning alcoholic 'til nobody noticed my new aesthetic").[24]Pitchfork's Shaad D'Souza suggested that the lyrics were in part autobiographical but also fictional, evoking the songwriting of Swift's 2020 album
Folklore.[25]
Critical reception
"Fortnight" received mixed reviews from music critics. Alli Rosenbloom of
CNN described "Fortnight" as a "dynamic first track" and "perhaps the album's catchiest", praising how Swift's and Malone's vocals go well together.[26] Mesfin Fekadu of The Hollywood Reporter also picked it as an album highlight.[14] In the Irish Independent, John Meagher opined that Malone's guest appearance was restrained compared to his usual tendency for "melodramatic performances", and the result turned out to be "all the better".[27] Ed Power in The Daily Telegraph wrote: "His breathy singing voice dovetails surprisingly with Swift's angsty coo".[28] Lipshutz ranked "Fortnight" fifth out of the 31 tracks on the
double album edition of The Tortured Poets Department, praising how Malone's appearance suits well with Swift's vocals and gives the bridge "subtle power and hangdog charm".[15] In PopMatters, Igor Bannikov complimented the "buoyant" synth-pop production and acclaimed the track as "the best opening track in her career".[10] Zoladz complimented the lyrics, describing "Fortnight" as a "potent [reminder] of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance".[21]
In less enthusiastic reviews, Callie Ahlgrim of Business Insider and Laura Molloy of NME deemed "Fortnight" uninventive for Swift's artistry, arguing that its sound is too similar to Antonoff and Swift's previous collaborations.[29][30] Mark Richardson of The Wall Street Journal labelled it "so-so".[9]Variety's Chris Willman regarded the single as a good choice for
pop radio, but he contended that it was "not much of an indication of the more visceral, obsessive stuff" for the album's remainder.[12]Paste criticized the song as "a heady vat of pop nothingness".[31] Alex Hudson of Exclaim! wrote: "I'm genuinely shocked that a seasoned hit-maker like Swift could possibly consider such a dreary, unmemorable song to be a single."[32]
Music video
Swift wrote and directed the music video for "Fortnight", with cinematography handled by
Rodrigo Prieto.[33] Four hours prior to the album's release, Swift posted a teaser for the music video on social media, which featured both artists "typing furiously away at a dystopic, snow-white office, before cutting to a clip of Swift strapped onto a strange contraption. Also spliced in is a snippet of Malone and Swift hugging in the middle of a highway with Swift draped in a black dress surrounded by burning pieces of paper."[34] According to some publications, the music video was inspired by the 2023 movie Poor Things.[35][36]
Synopsis
The music video was released on April 19, 2024. It features Swift, Malone, and Dead Poets Society co-stars
Ethan Hawke and
Josh Charles.[37] The video is in black and white and draws influences from silent films of the early 20th century.
The video starts off in a mental facility. Swift, donning a torn white wedding dress, is chained to her bed positioned on the ceiling, seemingly defying gravity. She is given medication labelled "Forget Him" and consequently allowed to walk freely around her room; as she stares at her reflection in a one-way mirror, she wipes her face off, revealing tattoos. She walks through a doorway and into her memories; now wearing a black, Victorian-era mourning dress, she recalls working in a sterile office environment filled with workers dressed in head-to-toe black, perpetually typing the lyrics "I love you, it's ruining my life" on a typewriter opposite her coworker, played by Malone. It is later revealed the two are lovers. Back at the mental facility, psychologists and medical professionals, played by Hawke, Charles, and Malone, conduct experiments on Swift, who is strapped to a gurney. Hawke pulls a lever, electrocuting Swift, causing machines to spark and malfunction. One of the doctors, Malone, who realizes who she really is, pulls the plug and delivers Swift from her pain. The final scenes depict Malone, soaking wet from rain, in a telephone booth situated on a lone cliff; Swift, looking on from up above the structure, grasps Malone's extended hand, symbolizing their reunification at long last.
In the United States, "Fortnight" debuted at number 9 on
Adult Pop Airplay and number 13 on
Pop Airplay. It tied Swift's "
Shake It Off" (2014) as the highest debut on the former chart, and Swift's “
Bad Blood" (2015) as the second-highest debut on the latter chart.[40] On the
Billboard Hot 100, "Fortnight" debuted at number one on the chart dated May 4, 2024, with first-week figures of 76.2 million streams, 31.1 million radio airplay audience impressions, and 19,000 copies sold. It registered the highest first-week streaming figure since Billboard removed
YouTube song user-generated content from its chart metrics in 2020. As Swift's 12th number-one single and seventh number-one debut, Swift tied
Madonna for the third-most Hot 100 number one singles among solo women, while tying
Ariana Grande for the most number-one debuts for a female artist. "Fortnight" also marked Malone's fifth number-one single and first number-one debut.[41]
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ČNS IFPI" (in Czech). Hitparáda – Digital Top 100 Oficiální. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Change the chart to CZ – SINGLES DIGITAL – TOP 100 and insert 202417 into search. Retrieved April 29, 2024.
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ČNS IFPI" (in Slovak). Hitparáda – Singles Digital Top 100 Oficiálna. IFPI Czech Republic. Note: Select SINGLES DIGITAL - TOP 100 and insert 202417 into search. Retrieved April 29, 2024.