The problem is that the public eye is ruinous, especially for women, says Dr Catherine Merrick

The headline on Gaby Hinsliff’s article ( 19 April ) reads “Meghan’s gone from royal upsetter to tradwife in three short years. Given what’s out there, you’d do the same”.

Well, no, I wouldn’t. I’d just erase myself from the public eye: the one thing she cannot or will not do. For the problem reflected in this article is not jam – Meghan Markle’s or anyone else’s. Jam is not the problem. (Which may or may not be a line from Taylor Swift’s new album...)

As Taylor Swift tops $1bn in tour revenue, musicians playing smaller venues are facing pitiful fees and frequent losses. Should the state step in to save our live music scene?

When you see a band playing to thousands of fans in a sun-drenched festival field, signing a record deal with a major label or playing endlessly from the airwaves, it’s easy to conjure an image of success that comes with some serious cash to boot – particularly when Taylor Swift has broken $1bn in revenue for her current Eras tour. But looks can be deceiving. “I don’t blame the public for seeing a band playing to 2,000 people and thinking they’re minted,” says artist manager Dan Potts. “But the reality is quite different.”

Post-Covid there has been significant focus on grassroots music venues as they struggle to stay open. There’s been less focus on the actual ability of artists to tour these venues. David Martin, chief executive officer of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), says we’re in a “cost-of-touring crisis”. Pretty much every cost attached to touring – van hire, crew, travel, accommodation, food and drink – has gone up, while fees and audiences often have not. “[Playing] live is becoming financially unsustainable for many artists,” he says. “Artists are seeing [playing] live as a loss leader now. That’s if they can even afford to make it work in the first place.”

The Tortured Poets Department depicts a spell of post-breakup mania against the perfect backdrop of the Eras tour – a thrillingly immature reality undermined by safe music

As The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) finally sees its official release, the intention behind the title remains as enigmatic as it was when Taylor Swift announced it two months ago. The title track seems to mock one such tortured poet who carts a typewriter around and likens the budding couple to Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas. “We’re modern idiots,” Swift laughs. The album’s aesthetic wallows in anguish and Swift’s liner notes and social media captions are littered with self-consciously poetic proclamations. And the erratic period captured in the lyrics couldn’t be further from a life of cloistered studiousness.

TTPD depicts a manic phase in Swift’s life last year, the reality behind the perfect stagecraft of the Eras tour. Wild-eyed from what sounds like the slow dissolution of a six-year relationship, she lunged at a once-forbidden paramour with a taste for dissolution, a foul mouth and a well-founded bad reputation. The latter, she makes clear as she sings repeatedly about flouting paternalistic and public censure, was a central part of the attraction: “He was chaos, he was revelry,” Swift sings on But Daddy (evidently about the 1975’s Matty Healy).

Lloyds Bank says more than 600 of its customers have been tricked by fraudsters so far

A rise in fraud cases involving Taylor Swift fans desperate to buy tickets to her sold-out UK shows has prompted Lloyds Bank to issue an “ urgent warning ” after more than 600 of its customers were scammed.

With the superstar due to arrive in Europe next month , the high street bank said its data suggested that UK fans had lost more than £1m to fraudsters so far.

Sarah Jessica Parker is the latest A-lister to lavish our fair isles with praise, from the transport networks to the eggs. I guess it’s easy to overlook problems when you’re a wealthy tourist

‘I want to know Jubilee, Piccadilly, Northern, I want to know Edgware … Your system here is exquisite.” That is Sarah Jessica Parker raving about the tube . “Goodge” she added, in wonderment, rolling the word around in her mouth like a mint humbug. She is in London, appearing in Plaza Suite at the Savoy theatre, having the time of her life and appreciating breakfast foods. “There’s these eggs here … that I go mad for, they’re called Burford, they have those orange yolks … oh my God … I love your rashers here,” she told the chef Ruth Rogers on Rogers’ podcast. Her Instagram features black cabs, graffiti and her learning which bus “gets me where I need to go. On time.”

Meanwhile, Zendaya has been “spotted patiently queueing for a Gail’s coffee and pastry ” and doing a big shop in New Malden Waitrose; Vogue has declared her “ one sausage roll away ” from honorary Briton status.

The superstar arrives in Europe next month – and Swifties, tourist boards and venues are already preparing

Tim Brown, 44, and his wife, Marcella, 34, may not consider themselves bona fide “Swifties”, but when it was announced last June that Taylor Swift would be visiting their corner of the globe this summer they could not resist joining the scramble for a pair of tickets.

A post-pandemic appetite for live music events has fuelled huge worldwide interest in the American singer-songwriter’s Eras tour, which surpassed in $1bn sales in November to become the highest-grossing series of concerts in history.

Universal Music remains at loggerheads with the app, but Swift – whose new album The Tortured Poets Department is out next week – can control where her work is available

Taylor Swift’s music has returned to TikTok, despite the singer’s record label, Universal Music, and the Chinese short-video app remaining at loggerheads over artist compensation and artificial intelligence.

The return of Swift’s music comes one week ahead of the release of her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.

Singapore reportedly paid the singer £2.4m a show to host her Eras tour, causing dismay in Thailand and the Philippines

Congratulations are in order for Taylor Swift, who makes her Forbes Rich List debut this year as one of the world’s newly minted billionaires . Not content with inspiring her own branch of economics – Swiftonomics, FYI – the singer is also responsible for causing geopolitical tension in south-east Asia, with her record-busting Eras tour.

The financial value of a Swift gig is of such national importance that Singapore reportedly paid her up to $3m (£2.4m) a show to ensure it was the only place to host Swift on her jaunt to the region this spring, prompting complaints from Thailand and the Philippines. In the words of one Filipino politician: “[It] isn’t what good neighbours do.” If $3m sounds like an awful lot to secure a concert exclusive, that’s small change when you consider the benefits – it’s estimated that her six shows have boosted the Singapore economy by $370m .

Pop promos were once cultural events almost as important as the music they promoted. In an era of easily digestible bite-size content, the art form is in danger of being lost for ever

In increasingly turbulent times for the music industry, one aspect has remained steadfast: its passion for stats. At the start of the decade – with YouTube a strong metric of success after the collapse of CD sales – you couldn’t move for mind-bending figures being trumpeted about music video viewership. In 2021, for example, K-pop boyband BTS’s Butter video amassed a staggering 108m views in 24 hours, breaking a record that appeared to be eclipsed on a weekly basis. Butter now sits on a not-too-shabby 950m views, a figure dwarfed by Katy Perry’s jungle-based Roar (3.9bn), Mark Ronson’s retro fantasia Uptown Funk (5.1bn) and Luis Fonsi’s Justin Bieber-assisted 2017 smash, Despacito , which has 8.4bn views.

The two dominant global forces in recent years have been K-pop and Latin music, and their big-budget music videos still rule the roost (Shakira and the Colombian singer Karol G’s TQG video was viewed more than a billion times last year). For Anglo-American pop in 2024, however, a seismic shift has occurred: music video viewership has plummeted, Beyoncé and Drake have stopped releasing videos altogether and pop’s A-list are struggling to make a dent on a platform they previously dominated.