Taylor Swift’s ‘ME!’ breaks YouTube’s 24-hour viewing record for a solo or female artist

Taylor Swift’s huge comeback has already resulted in a major win for the artist, breaking an impressive YouTube record along the way.

If you’ve not been paying attention to the music world over the last 48 hours, you might have just missed Taylor Swift’s latest single, ‘ME!’.

Featuring Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie and produced by New Zealand’s Joel Little, the tune was met with widespread acclaim from dedicated Swifties, while the track’s sing-song nature and simplistic lyrics have seen publications like Pitchfork dub it a tune “for literal children.”

However, it seems that this derision has not detracted from the song’s success, with ‘ME!’ managing to break another YouTube record for Taylor Swift.

As Billboard notes, the release of ‘ME!”s music video saw a massive 65.2 million views within its first 24 hours, making it the highest amount of views for a solo or female artist, and second most-viewed music video within that same timeframe.

The only music video to eclipse Taylor Swift in terms of 24-hour supremacy is that of BTS’ Halsey-featuring ‘Boy With Luv’, which achieved this title barely a fortnight ago.

BTS’ tune overtook Blackpink’s ‘Kill This Love’ as the record holder, having reached the milestone just one week earlier. However, this too wasn’t an isolated event, with Ariana Grande’s ‘thank u, next’ topping the list back in December, dethroning BTS’ ‘Idol’ in the process, which held this title since August.

Of course, this is a rather familiar record for Taylor Swift, who managed to set the record for most-viewed music video back in August of 2017, reaching 43.2 views in 24 hours for ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, a record which stood for just shy of one year.

As we recently noted though, this certainly won’t be the first time that YouTube’s 24-hour viewing record is either broken or added to, with hyped releases and voracious fanbases doing their best to ensure their favourite artists score the viewing honours that they deserve.

With Taylor Swift’s new song now out in the world, fans are undoubtedly expecting a new album to follow. Who knows, we might just see one of Taylor’s new singles breaking YouTube’s 24-hour view record once again before long.

Check out the video for Taylor Swift’s ‘ME!’:

Most-viewed YouTube videos in the first 24 hours

1. ‘Boy With Luv’ – BTS (feat. Halsey) (74.6 million)
2. ‘Me!’ – Taylor Swift (feat. Brendon Urie) (65.2 million)
3. ‘Kill This Love’ – Blackpink (56.7 million)
4. ‘Thank U, Next’ – Ariana Grande (55.4 million)
5. ‘Idol’ – BTS (45.9 million)
6. ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ – Taylor Swift (43.2 million)
7. ‘Fancy’ – Twice (39.8 million)
8. ‘Killshot’ – Eminem (38.1 million)
9. ‘Slowly Slowly’ – Guru Randhawa (feat. Pitbull) (38 million)
10. ‘Ddu-Du Ddu-Du’ – Blackpink (36.2 million)

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.