‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Series Helped Revive Taylor Swift’s Old Songs

Three years since the release of Taylor Swift’s award-winning album “Lover” in 2019, fans from all over the world have brought back its greatest hits to the American Billboard music charts.

“The Summer I Turned Pretty,” a series adaptation of the best-selling young adult novel by Jenny Han, featured three songs from “Lover.” The overwhelming support from fans of the series and Swift helped them [songs] re-enter the Billboard Top 40, according to Variety. The tracks that recently surged in popularity were “Cruel Summer,” “False God” and “This Love” from the “1989” album.

“Lover” used to be the fourth highest-streamed album by Swift on Spotify, but after the series premiered, it claimed the top spot with 3.9 million streams. “Cruel Summer” also hit 301.45 million streams since its release on the same music platform in 2019.

Interestingly, using Swift’s songs wasn’t just a producer’s call. In an interview with E! News in June, Han, 41, revealed that it was her “number one dream” to include Swift’s music because the singer’s songs inspired her to finish writing the “The Summer I Turned Pretty” trilogy.

“I was listening to ‘Fearless,’ and I was like, ‘These songs have really helped me get to the finish line,’” Han said.

"When I write books, I like to listen to music to help me see the emotional vein of the story, and her [Swift] music really did that with me for the series," she added.

Han also shared that she knew it would “resonate deeply” with the fans because they have connected Swift’s music to the story since the books came out.

"I knew what it would mean to me, and I knew even more what it would mean to the people who have held these books really close to their hearts," she explained. "That just felt like the best gift I could ever give."

Before producing “The Summer I Turned Pretty” into a series in 2018, it was first published as a book in 2009. It also had two other installments. Completing the trilogy, “It’s Not Summer Without You” and “We’ll Always Have Summer” were released in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

“The Summer I Turned Pretty” series revolves around a teenage summer romance filled with lessons about first love, friendship and family. It has become an instant favorite among fans of this generation. Aside from that, it features fresh faces. The cast includes Lola Tung (Belly), Christopher Briney (Conrad), Gavin Casalegno (Jeremiah), Sean Kaufman (Steven) and Minnie Mills (Shayla).

The series is now the number one show on Amazon Prime Video. The seven-episode first season arrived on the platform on June 17.

According to a social analytics agency, the show has an impressive social media reach on TikTok. The #TheSummerITurnedPretty garnered 1.3 billion views, produced 107 thousand global posts on the weekend it premiered, and 725 million potential impressions across the platform.

Belly’s journey in finding true love is not over for fans of the series and the books. The series was confirmed to have a Season 2 ahead of the Season 1 premiere, but no official release date was announced.