Proving that we might not have the attention spans of goldfish after all, Taylor Swift's long-awaited (and long-running) 10-minute version of "All Too Well" debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart yesterday (November 22) — making it the longest No. 1 song of all time.
The record was previously held by Don McLean's "American Pie," from the 1971 album of the same name, which clocks in at 8 minutes and 37 seconds. It held the record for nearly 50 years after initially landing on the chart a long, long time ago in January 1972. (You could say November 22, 2021, was the day the music was officially pronounced dead.)
Meanwhile, Swift's Red (Taylor's Version) closer is a whopping 10 minutes and 13 seconds — an extended cut of the original fifth track of 2012's Red, which ran about half the length.
In disbelief, she responded on Instagram by posting a Reel where she shared screenshots of the chart update and mouthed a popular TikTok video of a baby saying "What the hell."
"You guys sent a 10 minute song to number one for the first time in history honestly WTH," the singer-songwriter wrote in the caption.
"All Too Well" has been heralded as the best song in Swift's catalogue for pretty much the past decade. After hinting at a longer version for years, she delivered the new arrangement with the additional verses that had been left on the cutting room floor for a stunning lesson in context.
Aside from releasing the deep cut as Track 30 on her re-recording of the 2012 album, she also wrote and directed a short film starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien, performed the opus on Saturday Night Live and shared an additional "Sad Girl Autumn Version" recorded at Aaron Dessner's Long Pond Studios.
And though she's not directly responsible for the Jake Gyllenhaal memes, we're sure that's been a contributing factor.
See Swift's Instagram post below.
The record was previously held by Don McLean's "American Pie," from the 1971 album of the same name, which clocks in at 8 minutes and 37 seconds. It held the record for nearly 50 years after initially landing on the chart a long, long time ago in January 1972. (You could say November 22, 2021, was the day the music was officially pronounced dead.)
Meanwhile, Swift's Red (Taylor's Version) closer is a whopping 10 minutes and 13 seconds — an extended cut of the original fifth track of 2012's Red, which ran about half the length.
In disbelief, she responded on Instagram by posting a Reel where she shared screenshots of the chart update and mouthed a popular TikTok video of a baby saying "What the hell."
"You guys sent a 10 minute song to number one for the first time in history honestly WTH," the singer-songwriter wrote in the caption.
"All Too Well" has been heralded as the best song in Swift's catalogue for pretty much the past decade. After hinting at a longer version for years, she delivered the new arrangement with the additional verses that had been left on the cutting room floor for a stunning lesson in context.
Aside from releasing the deep cut as Track 30 on her re-recording of the 2012 album, she also wrote and directed a short film starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien, performed the opus on Saturday Night Live and shared an additional "Sad Girl Autumn Version" recorded at Aaron Dessner's Long Pond Studios.
And though she's not directly responsible for the Jake Gyllenhaal memes, we're sure that's been a contributing factor.
See Swift's Instagram post below.
For best results on vinyl, listen to Red (Taylor's Version) at 45 RPM — 33 1/3 might be okay but it's not fine at all. Swift also crushed Jack White's vinyl sales record earlier this year with evermore.
