Taylor Swift’s ‘Cruel Summer’ re-enters UK charts four years after release
Taylor Swift‘s ‘Cruel Summer’ has re-entered the Top 40 of the UK singles charts four years after its release.
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The song was released on Swift’s 2019 LP ‘Lover‘, but never formally released as a single somewhat due to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
After a rise in streams after the start of Swift’s ‘Eras’ tour, where she played ‘Cruel Summer’ live for the first time, it was then released as an official single by her label this month.
After the re-release, ‘Cruel Summer’ has shot up the charts and now sits at Number 12, passing its original peak of Number 27 from 2019, per BBC News.
At a recent ‘Eras’ tour show, Swift thanked fans for their streams of ‘Cruel Summer’, which had led the label to release it as a single.
Swift told fans at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium that the song was her “pride and joy” and her “favourite” off her 2019 album.
“The weirdest, most magical thing is happening,” Swift said from the ‘Eras‘ tour stage [via Billboard]. “It’s never happened to me in the whole time I’ve ever been doing this.
“‘Cruel Summer’ is a song, I just played it a second ago. I don’t know if you remember. We had a blast, yeah? The one with the bridge where we all screamed,” she said.
Elsewhere, Swift recently added a fifth show at Wembley Stadium to the international leg of the ‘Eras’ tour, which is set to take place next year.
It follows previously announced dates in June (21–22) and August (16–17). Swift will also be making stops in the UK in Liverpool, Edinburgh and Cardiff.
Currently, the ongoing US leg of the ‘Eras’ tour is set to continue through North America until August 9 where it’ll conclude with the final of six shows at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium.
Last night (June 1) in Cincinnati, Swift gave a live debut to ‘Evermore’ track ‘Ivy’ with help from its co-writer and Ohio native Aaron Dessner.
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Will Richards
NME