Taylor Swift Broke Two Spotify Records at Midnight and Somehow Resurrected the Entire Joe Alwyn Discourse by Breakfast

September 26, 2026 · 74 sources

Quick Hits

Taylor Swift just broke two 2026 Spotify records with the midnight release of The Life of a Showgirl: Encore, including most-streamed female artist in a single day this year (per Variety and Billboard). The stream economy is simply a Taylor Swift economy with extra steps.
That same release has the internet fully re-litigating Joe Alwyn — BuzzFeed has a whole roundup on the "revisionist history" debate, and the takes are flying.
Olivia Rodrigo officially kicked off the Unraveled tour Friday night at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, CT, and the opening-night setlist is already circulating.
On a serious note: TMZ reports Carrot Top has canceled three weeks of Las Vegas shows as he remains hospitalized following a reported suicide attempt. No jokes here — genuinely hoping he's got good people around him right now.

The Joe Alwyn discourse is back and messier than ever. Per BuzzFeed's roundup of the fallout from Taylor's new song, listeners are openly questioning the established narrative — one take making the rounds: "you can't both claim that he used for clout and then complain that he was never public with you. that doesn't make any sense." A whole fandom doing forensic textual analysis before 9 a.m. Truly awe-inspiring behavior.
Robert Pattinson shared his favorite meme of himself during a recent interview (currently blowing up on r/popculturechat), and honestly? The man being in on his own meme canon is the only correct celebrity behavior. Rob remains undefeated.

Olivia's Unraveled opener is the moment of the weekend — first show of the tour, Hartford, and Variety's live-updating setlist post is basically a group chat at this point.
Victoria Monét revealed the track list for Frequency of Love (out Friday, Oct. 2), and it's stacked: Bruno Mars, SZA, Bryson Tiller and Leon Thomas all appear. She also dropped a trailer for it. October is already booked.
Rough weather washed out Oceans Calling Festival's opening day, per Rolling Stone — Dave Matthews Band, Hootie & the Blowfish, and Ludacris were among the scrapped sets. Mother Nature, the one headliner you can't negotiate with.
Per r/popculturechat, Ed Sheeran's shows at Gillette Stadium have been canceled. That's all we know for now — stay tuned.
Common is having quite the week: Billboard reports he received SAG-AFTRA and SoundExchange's inaugural Artist Impact Award ("Makes me feel like I've got to do more"), and he was also among the honorees at the Black Music Action Coalition's sixth annual gala alongside Patti LaBelle, Public Enemy, Nicole Wyskoarko and Tina Davis.

Casting news of the day: Sabrina Carpenter and Margaret Qualley have joined Tom Holland in the untitled Fred Astaire biopic (per Billboard, citing Deadline). Tom Holland tap dancing, Sabrina doing... something fabulous presumably. We are seated.
A very jet-lagged Scarlett Johansson hit the New York Film Festival premiere of Paper Tiger — which kicked off the festival's 64th edition — reuniting with co-stars Adam Driver and Miles Teller. Her review of her own state: "I'm hallucinating." Relatable queen of running on fumes.
The Star Wars rom-com Love Hypothesis is real and Variety is breaking down its Easter eggs with director Claire Scanlon — including a Gracie Abrams song and color-coded wardrobes, all set around a Stanford biology lab. A Star Wars universe meet-cute. Bold. Kind of obsessed.
In "cursed but fascinating" news: AI actress Tilly Norwood says she'd love to work with Tom Holland and Olivia Colman, "but only if it were their digital twins" on an "AI production." Tom Holland's name coming up twice in one AI story is doing nothing to calm me down.
Indian devotional sleeper hit Hanuman Ansh has grossed more than $3.5 million internationally under Hombale Films (the K.G.F. and Kantara powerhouse), per Variety.
Gamers, you didn't think I forgot: Remedy's Control sequel Control Resonant finally dropped Thursday on Steam, Epic and PS5 after a nearly seven-year development — with Dylan stepping in as the new protagonist.

Isaac Mizrahi is promoting the new restoration of his 1995 doc Unzipped and giving absolutely zero softened takes to Variety: the Devil Wears Prada cerulean blue speech "makes me want to kill somebody," and he's still rehashing the John Galliano Met Gala fiasco. Fashion elders talking messy >>> everything.

The internet's cozy-content wave has arrived right on schedule: BuzzFeed is running fall bucket list prompts, a "which fall movie reigns supreme" bracket, and — my personal favorite — a quiz challenging you to identify movies purely by looking at the cat. Eight correct makes you a "true film expert," and the author's confession of wanting the Practical Magic cat "since FOREVER" is the most valid thing published today.