Fortnight (song)

"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 downtempo electropop and synth-pop ballad, "Fortnight" is instrumented by a pulsing synth bassline. Its lyrics portray a woman in an unhappy marriage who becomes next-door neighbors with an ex-lover who is also married, and the two vow to escape to Florida.

Music critics were divided on the song; some praised the vocal chemistry of Swift and Malone, but others considered the production weak. "Fortnight" broke the record for the highest single-day streams on the streaming platform Spotify. In the United States, the song debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100 with the second highest single-week streaming figure since 2020, marking Swift's twelfth and Malone's fifth number-one song. 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, the Philippines, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, 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
Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department, her eleventh original studio album, at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards on February 5, 2024. The following day, she announced the track listing via social media; Post Malone was revealed to be the featured artist on the opening track, "Fortnight". She had worked on the album while on the U.S. leg of the Eras Tour in 2023. During an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1, Malone said that 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. At the time of the interview, Malone revealed that he had not heard the full song yet.

The track was released as the lead single of The Tortured Poets Department on April 19, 2024, concurrently with the album's release. Republic Records serviced "Fortnight" to contemporary hit and hot adult contemporary radio in the United States, while Universal Music promoted it on radio airplay in Italy. The track was also made available for purchase as a CD single through Swift's online store in the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom, and Germany and Switzerland.

A remix produced by Blond:ish was released on May 21, 2024. Starting from the May 2024 shows in Nanterre as part of the Eras Tour, Swift revamped the set list to include songs from The Tortured Poets Department in a new act, including "Fortnight". For its performance, the stage features a "TTPD"-emblazoned bed and dancers dressed as nurses. Swift sings the song as she sits on a typewriter, across from a dancer. On July 8, 2024, an acoustic version and a remix produced by Cults was released.

Music and lyrics
"Fortnight" is an 1980s-influenced downtempo electropop and synth-pop ballad. Its subtle electronic production is instrumented by a pulsing synth bassline generated by 8-bit synth plucks. The song is written in the key of B major in common time signature with a tempo of 96 beats per minute. Some critics opined that "Fortnight" was stylistically similar to the music of Swift's 2022 album Midnights. Clash's Lauren Webb wrote that the track had a 1980s power ballad sensibility reminiscent of such artists as Roxette, Cutting Crew, and Phil Collins. Writing for Billboard, Jason Lipshutz observed how "Swift sings in a dulled monotone that flares up with the stabs of emotion" in the verses before Malone "swirls around her upon arrival" in the bridge.

Some American publications pointed to the fact that the title is a British English noun meaning "two weeks". 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. That she lives next-door to her ex-lover makes her fantasize about killing the wife ("Your wife waters flowers/ I want to kill her"). 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"). By the end, Malone's character, representing the ex-lover of Swift's character, sings about escaping 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").

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". 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. 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". In American Songwriter, Thom Donovan summed up the storyline as "a former love affair turning into a suburban nightmare". Consequences Mary Siroky opined that the lyrics had a heavy "air of death" ("I want to kill him"), while USA Todays Melissa Ruggeri thought that they were "darkly funny" ("I was a functioning alcoholic 'til nobody noticed my new aesthetic"). Helen Brown of The Independent suggested that the lyrics were autobiographical, but Pitchfork Shaad D'Souza suggested that they blended the confessional and fictional, evoking the songwriting of Swift's 2020 album Folklore.

Critical reception
Alli Rosenbloom of CNN described the song as a "dynamic first track" and "perhaps the album's catchiest", praising how Swift's and Malone's vocals go well together. Mesfin Fekadu of The Hollywood Reporter also picked it as an album highlight. 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". Ed Power in The Daily Telegraph wrote: "His breathy singing voice dovetails surprisingly with Swift's angsty coo". 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". In PopMatters, Igor Bannikov complimented the "buoyant" synth-pop production and acclaimed the track as "the best opening track in her career". Zoladz complimented the lyrics, describing "Fortnight" as a "potent [reminder] of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance".

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. Mark Richardson of The Wall Street Journal labelled it "so-so". 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. Paste criticized the song as "a heady vat of pop nothingness", while Our Culture Mag's said: "no tortured love story should sound this bland." 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."

Commercial performance
After one day of release, "Fortnight" set the single-day streaming record for any song on Spotify, surpassing the all-time peak previously held by Mariah Carey's song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (1994). The single debuted atop the Billboard Global 200, marking Swift's fifth number-one song and tying her with Bad Bunny for the most chart toppers among solo acts. It was one of the 9 tracks from The Tortured Poets Department to debut within the top 10, extending Swift's number of top-10 entries to 33.

In the United States, "Fortnight" debuted at number 9 on Adult Pop Airplay and number 13 on Pop Airplay. It tied her own "Shake It Off" (2014) as the highest debut on the former chart, and “Bad Blood" (2015) as the second-highest debut on the latter chart. On the Adult Pop Airplay chart dated June 22, 2024, the single reached number one to become Swift's record-extending 13th chart topper and Malone's second. 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 as the second 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, it tied Swift with 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. The single spent two consecutive weeks atop the Hot 100.

"Fortnight" also debuted at number one and was Swift's fourth number-one single in the United Kingdom and 12th in Australia. The single also topped the charts in Canada, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Billboard Hits of the World charts for Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Across other European territories, "Fortnight" reached the top five in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Belgian Flanders, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Latvia, Lithuania, and Iceland. The track peaked at number two on the chart for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In Asia-Pacific, "Fortnight" peaked in the top five of Billboard Hits of the World charts for Taiwan and Indonesia.

Music video
Swift wrote and directed the music video for "Fortnight", with cinematography handled by Rodrigo Prieto. Four hours prior to the album's release, Swift posted a teaser for the music video on social media. The music video was released on April 19, 2024. It has a black-and-white cinematography and features Swift and Malone as ex-lovers, and Dead Poets Society 's co-stars Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles as psychiatrists carrying out tests on Swift.

The video starts with Swift seen in a white dress, chained to her bed in a mental facility; the bed is suspended on the wall. After a faceless person comes to give her a "Forget Him" pill, Swift is seen wiping her face to reveal tattoos, before walking into a white room filled with typewriters with her and Malone typing; she is now seen in a black mourning Victorian dress. Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph thought that this part symbolizes Swift's grievance from a broken relationship, demonstrated by the switch from a white wedding dress to a black mourning dress. Slant Magazine's Alexa Camp wrote that Swift and Malone's typewriting was in "a sort of relationship rehabilitation center where they're tasked with reliving happier memories of each other".

The video then shows scenes of Swift and Malone embracing on a lone highway before being caught up in a tornado that causes loose papers to swirl around them; Brittany Spanos of Rolling Stone thought that this part seemingly tells "the story of star-crossed lovers". Back at the mental facility, Swift is seen strapped to a gurney, in a laboratory. The doctors (Hawke and Charles) perform a shock therapy on her, as Malone stands by the side and watches on until sparks emit from the machine and Malone unplugs the machine. In the final scene, Malone calls from a telephone booth that Swift is on top of in the pouring thunderstorm rain, on an isolated cliff. He ultimately comes out of the booth and grabs Swift's hand. The video ends with silent-film credits.

Swift shared via social media that the video summarizes the aspects of the album, "I wanted to show you the worlds I saw in my head that served as the backdrop for making this music. Pretty much everything in it is a metaphor or a reference to one corner of the album or another." According to some publications, the music video evokes the 2023 movie Poor Things. Megan Thomas of CNN wrote that the video is "strange yet beautiful". Power thought that the video had a haunting quality, saying that "here, she gets under our skin like never before".

Personnel

 * Taylor Swift – vocals, songwriter, producer
 * Post Malone – vocals, songwriter
 * Jack Antonoff – producer, songwriter, drums, Juno, M1, percussion, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, programming
 * Louis Bell – vocal producer, vocal engineer
 * Serban Ghenea – mixing
 * Bryce Bordone – mix engineer
 * Laura Sisk – recording engineer
 * Oli Jacobs – recording engineer
 * Jon Sher – assistant recording engineer
 * Jack Manning – assistant recording engineer
 * Lauren Marquez – assistant recording engineer
 * Sean Hutchinson – drums, drums recording
 * Michael Riddleberger – recording engineer
 * Randy Merrill – mastering

Track listing

 * Digital download and streaming – Blond:ish remix
 * 1) "Fortnight" (Blond:ish remix) – 3:36
 * 2) "Fortnight" – 3:48


 * Digital download and streaming – acoustic version
 * 1) "Fortnight" (acoustic version) – 3:48
 * 2) "Fortnight" (Cults remix) – 3:14
 * 3) "Fortnight" – 3:48