Taylor Swift now has more No. 1 albums than any woman in history
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Taylor Swift performs at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on May 26. Her Speak Now (Taylor's Version) debuts at No. 1 this week as the year's biggest new album.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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NEW YORK – When American singer Taylor Swift released her album Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) in July, there was no doubt it would debut at No. 1.
The only questions were how forcefully it would smash records, how many mountains of vinyl it would sell and how far down the chart her catalogue would push everybody else’s.
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), the third instalment in Swift’s series of re-recorded albums – this one recreating Speak Now from 2010, with a thick appendix of tracks revisited from the cutting-room floor – is the year’s biggest new LP, notching up the equivalent of 716,000 sales in the United States.
It easily topped US country music singer Morgan Wallen’s album One Thing At A Time, which opened with 501,000 in March.
The new album is Swift’s 12th to reach No. 1, beating US singer Barbra Streisand for the most chart-toppers by a woman.
Canadian rapper Drake also has 12 No. 1 albums, but the only acts with more are US rapper Jay-Z (14) and English rock band The Beatles (19).
The popularity of Swift’s Eras Tour has lifted her entire catalogue. In addition to the new Speak Now, she now has three other titles in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart: Midnights (No. 5), Lover (No. 7) and Folklore (No. 10).
Swift, 33, is the first living act to have four albums in the Top 10 since US trumpeter Herb Alpert in 1966. US singer Prince had five after his death in 2016, and for many years, Billboard barred older “catalogue” albums from reappearing on its main chart – a rule that was changed after pop star Michael Jackson’s death in 2009.
Swift’s effort to remake her first six albums began as a way to reclaim and control her earlier work, after her old record label was sold without her participation.
But the project has turned into its own phenomenon, with fans using the opportunity to revisit their own relationship with the music, and critics scouring the new recordings for rare – but notable – edits, like a change to a lyric on the track Better Than Revenge that had come to be seen as outdated or worse.
The new version of Speak Now had a bigger opening than Swift’s two previous re-recordings, Red (605,000) and Fearless (291,000).
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is the year’s biggest new LP, notching up the equivalent of 716,000 sales in the US.
PHOTO: REPUBLIC RECORDS
Its 716,000 “equivalent” sales – a measurement by Billboard and the data service Luminate that reconciles the various ways fans consume music – incorporate 269 million streams and 507,000 copies sold as a complete package.
It also includes 268,500 copies on vinyl, the second-biggest week for any vinyl album since the predecessors of Luminate began keeping reliable sales records in 1991.
The biggest was Swift’s own Midnights, which opened with 575,000 copies sold on LP back in October.
Speak Now continues an astonishingly productive run for Swift.
It is her sixth studio album in three years. According to Billboard, she is the only artiste to notch up new No. 1 albums in each of the last five calendar years: Lover (2019); Folklore and Evermore (2020); Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) (2021); Midnights (2022); and the new Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
This week, Wallen’s One Thing holds at No. 2; US rapper Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape, last week’s top album, falls to No. 3; and Mexican singer Peso Pluma’s Genesis is at No. 4. NYTIMES
