A Taylor Swift Deep Cut Is Rising on Meme Momentum, Not Promotion

A 2024 album track that never aimed at the charts is moving anyway. “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus,” track 20 of 31 on The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, rose 37 percent in U.S. on-demand streams between Sept. 18 and Sept. 25, according to Luminate. Average daily streams climbed from roughly 48,600 to 60,900 across that period, about 25 percent. The daily peak of 70,000 is modest by Swift’s standards, and the song reached only Number 36 on the Hot 100 in its debut week.

The Aaron Dessner-produced ballad was never built for more. It is a slow, piano-led song about a relationship that never fully resolved, and it has spent months as a fan favorite tucked deep into the tracklist. What changed was not a single, a video or a tour moment. Bald Ann Dowd, the social media persona run by New York creator Alison Sivitz, has posted about the track nearly 30 times on X and made six TikToks for an audience of roughly 70,000 followers. The posts grew frequent enough that some followers checked in on her with concern.

That is the more interesting shift. Catalog songs now resurface through personality rather than programming, and a jump of this size says as much about the mechanics of online attention as it does about the song itself. A deep cut drifts upward because one account with a voice keeps talking about it, and enough listeners decide to follow the argument.