Taylor Swift breaks her own record with a 12th week at No. 1

NEW YORK – American pop superstar Taylor Swift set a personal chart record this week with her album The Tortured Poets Department after fending off the latest challenger, American singer-songwriter Zach Bryan.

With 12 weeks at No. 1, Tortured Poets is now the longest-running chart-topper of Swift’s career, exceeding the 11-week totals she had for Fearless (2008) and 1989 (2014).

It is the first album to rack up a dozen consecutive times at the top since American country music singer Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At A Time, which did so in 2023.

Swift, 34, joins rare company in the 68-year history of the Billboard 200 chart.

In the elite group of albums that not only had long consecutive runs at No. 1, but also did so from the first week they came out, Tortured Poets surpasses late American singer Whitney Houston’s 1987 LP Whitney – featuring enduring hits like I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) and So Emotional – which spent its first 11 weeks at No. 1, and is just shy of American singer Stevie Wonder’s 13 for Songs In The Key Of Life in 1976 and 1977.

In its most recent week out, Tortured Poets had the equivalent of 163,000 sales in the US, including 95 million streams and 90,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.

Since its release in April, the full 31-track album has logged three billion streams and had the equivalent of just under five million sales in the US.

The Great American Bar Scene – the new album by Bryan, whose style has been described as Americana, folk, rock and country – was Swift’s latest competitor for the top spot.

And the race seemed close, with both artistes unleashing some chart-goosing weapons in the closing hours of the tracking period last week.

Bryan, 28, offered his album at a discounted price, while Swift released another three variants of Tortured Poets as digital downloads.

But Swift triumphed, while The Great American Bar Scene landed at No. 2 with the equivalent of 137,000 sales.

Swift’s most potent weapon may have been her CD fulfilment warehouse.

According to Billboard, Swift’s webstore last week restocked seven previously released CD variants of Tortured Poets and shipped them to fans, driving a huge spike in her traditional album sales. Of the 90,000 full albums she sold last week, 67,000 were on CD. The rest were digital downloads and vinyl LPs.

Bryan’s greatest disadvantage may have been self-inflicted.

Great American was released on July 4, a Thursday – the final tracking day for last week’s chart, where it opened at No. 17 with the equivalent of 32,000 sales. Had the album been released just one day later, it might have sent the album to No. 1 ahead of Tortured Poets.

Also this week, Wallen’s One Thing At A Time is No. 3, American singer Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard And Soft is No. 4 and American singer Chappell Roan’s The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess holds at No. 5. NYTIMES