Taylor Swift’s new LP, The Tortured Poets Department, has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, making it her 14th studio album reach the peak. The album achieved enormous first-week sales, debuting with 2.61 million equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending April 25, as Billboard reports. Of that number, 1.914 million units were traditional album sales—with vinyl purchases alone representing a massive 859,000—and on-demand streams clocked in at 891.34 million units. Swift is now tied with Jay-Z for the most No. 1 albums among soloists. (The record for most No. 1s of all time is still held by the Beatles, who have 19 overall.)
With those numbers, The Tortured Poets Department officially has the largest streaming week for an album ever. It’s also the second-largest week for an album in general since the Billboard 200 started measuring by units in December 2014, the third-largest sales week since Luminate began electronically tracking sales in 1991, and the largest sales week for an album on vinyl in the modern era, reports Billboard.
Swift announced The Tortured Poets Department during her acceptance speech at the 2024 Grammy Awards for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights. The new album has contributions from Post Malone, Florence Welch, Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner, Laura Sisk, Glenn Kotche, and many others.
Just days after the new album dropped on April 19 (along with its surprise second part, The Anthology), Swift broke her own record for most weekly vinyl album sales, moving 700,000 copies. Across all formats, there were about 1.5 million U.S. sales after the three-day period
The Tortured Poets Department also became the first album to hit one billion Spotify streams within its first week. Swift had only herself to beat, as the record was previously held by Midnights.
After releasing The Tortured Poets Department and The Anthology, Swift shared a black-and-white music video for “Fortnight,” co-starring Post Malone, Ethan Hawke, and Josh Charles.
Source : Pitchfork
