iTunes: Taylor Swift Thrives While Rihanna Takes A Dive

Taylor Swift‘s “Bad Blood” has been No. 1 for the past week on the iTunes chart. The success of Taylor’s latest single on iTunes, along with streaming points for the newly released video, could easily send the song to the top ten on the new Billboard Hot 100 chart, which will be released in a couple days. Taylor Swift’s new single sits at No. 53 right now, but that’s without all the points for sales and streaming she earned in the past week.

The video for Swift’s “Bad Blood” has divided fans; some think it’s one of her best videos to date and others aren’t very thrilled. After an article appeared at Billboard on the new video, commenter HaveSome sounded off.

“Meh. Just a parade of her friends and a number of other nobodies and has-beens and a LOT of stolen ideas…especially that Crimson character who is dressed just like LeLoo from ‘The Fifth Element’ including the red hair….but with blue body wraps instead.”

Another commenter, Lewis, really liked the “Bad Blood” video.

“Brilliant as usual Taylor, you never let me down. I thought the video would be quite cheap or tacky because of the spy/ secret agent theme but it really wasn’t. I love the homage she paid to Britney Spears with her Toxic and Oops!..I Did It Again videos”

“Bad Blood” already has almost 67 million views on YouTube. Swift is doing a lot better than Rihanna, whose singles aren’t exactly lighting up the iTunes chart (or any chart, really). “Bi*ch Better Have My Money” has faltered to No. 47 and “American Oxygen,” which many consider one of the biggest flop singles of the year, isn’t even on the chart.

There are still rumors going around that Rihanna is going to debut her new album, which keeps getting delayed due to the lack of anything that resembles a hit single, on Jay-Z’s sinking ship Tidal service. This would be a huge mistake for Rihanna, who already faced a backlash when she debuted “American Oxygen” on the much-derided service. At this point, perhaps Rihanna should give away her new album for free, as long as she doesn’t force people to download it — we all know how well that worked out when U2 forced Songs of Innocence on iTunes listeners.

To Rihanna’s credit, she is not the only pop music star having troubles. She joins Madonna, Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, and even Britney Spears in the Pop Star Hall of Disappointing Sales. Taylor Swift, however, has bucked the trend and looks to make 2015 her most successful year yet.

[Photo Credit: Twitter]