Radio listeners everywhere have found themselves posed with a challenge over the past few months: getting the infectious lyrics “heartbreakers gonna break, break, break break, break…” out of their heads, but no one seemed able to shake them.

Taylor Swift’s fifth studio album, 1989, was released two months later, on October 26, and has left the world singing along.

In August, Swift announced the album as her “first documented pop-album” and released the hit single “Shake it Off.” It took the Number One slot immediately and stayed there until the release of her next two singles, “Out of the Woods” and “Welcome to New York.” Many fans were nervous following the release of the singles, seeing as all three are rather repetitive and pale in comparison to the emotional, poetic lyrics Swift has been known to write, like in her previous hits “All Too Well” and “Teardrops on my Guitar.” In fact, “Welcome to New York,” the first track on the album, left New Yorkers outraged. The lyrics are repetitive, the synth beats cheapen the sound, and does not do the city justice. It was written as a love letter to her new home, after she dropped $19.9 million on a penthouse apartment in Tribeca. It’s up against the likes of classic New York songs by Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, and Jay-Z.

As a whole, 1989 is everything fans expected from a Taylor Swift album, just without the typical banjo and fiddle solos. In it’s first week, the album sold 1.287 million copies – a feat not achieved since Eminem’s The Eminem Show in 2002. The album maintained the top spot well into its third week, and is the only album to spend three consecutive weeks in the top spot of the Billboard Top 100 Chart, besides the “Frozen” soundtrack.

Not only is the album itself doing well and breaking industry records, but her most recent single “Blank Space” is all over the radio, Snapchat stories… but not Spotify playlists. Immediately after the album’s release, Swift took all of her music off of the popular music streaming service at the request of her management label. Spotify only pays artists a small sum of money for every play, which was not acceptable to Big Machine Records, Taylor’s record and management label. Many have criticised Swift for this move, considering streaming services like Spotify and Pandora are the current “big thing” in the music world, but Swift takes a lot of pride in her work, and Swift recently expressed at the American Music Awards that she “didn’t want to lend her life’s work to a company that doesn’t fairly compensate music creators.” She clearly does not need the money, but does want proper recognition and reward for her work as an artist. Swift even said that she wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal this past summer explaining her thoughts on the issue. She compared music streaming to putting a painting up in a museum and allowing people to come in to the museum, rip a piece off of it, and walk out as if it is theirs.

Despite all of the talk surrounding the controversy, Hackley students are still falling in love with her music. Senior James Firpo has been heard singing “Blank Space” in the hallways, sophomore Kevin Kim has referred to it as “his song,” and sophomores Fernando Docters, Amari Sherrill, and Chris Wahrhaftig agreed that they all had a “passion for Taylor Swift,” after being caught singing along to her music in a library study room.

In the past, she’s been a rather polarizing figure; either people loved her or they hated her. A few weeks ago, Saturday Night Live aired a digital sketch focusing in on a new drug that some may feel they need: “Swiftamine.” The sketch opened with a few characters (played by Cecily Strong, Taran Killam, and Chris Rock) talking about their recent epiphany: they like Taylor Swift. Dr. David Doctor (Beck Bennett) goes on to explain that Taylor Swift herself has been the number one cause of vertigo in adults over the past month. Perhaps it’s the fact that she pokes fun at herself with lines like “…got a long list of ex lovers/ they’ll tell you I’m insane…” and “I go on too many dates/ but I can’t make ‘em stay…”, or maybe it’s the fact that each of her songs mean something, and listeners can’t help but find a way to connect. No matter what it is, Ms. Swift is doing something right and despite what some may want, there is no Swiftamine to save them.