Taylor Swift is setting chart benchmarks with the release of her album ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’. Not only did it debut at No. 1 with the highest numbers of the year so far for any release, but it’s one of four albums she now has in the top 10 of the charts. scrapbooks. According to Billboard, this is the first time a woman has done this in the entire six-decade history of an album chart — and she’s one of only three artists to ever accomplish the feat.
Swift also set a record for female artist with the most No. 1 albums in history: she now has a dozen, edging out Barbra Streisand, with whom she previously tied at 11 each.
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“Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” bowed to the top of the Billboard 200 with 716,000 album-equivalent units. That number ensured it wasn’t even a photo-finish in this year’s opening week derby, as the previous best number was held by Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time.” , which debuted in March with 501,000.
The other three albums Swift has in her triumphant top 10 quadrilogy are 2022’s “Midnights” at No. 5, 2019’s “Lover” at No. 7, and 2020’s “Folklore” at No. 10.
To answer trivia fans who want to know who is part of the very short list of artists who landed four albums simultaneously in the top 10, the other two are Herb Alpert and Prince. Alpert was the last living person to handle that many, when he did so in 1966. It happened to Prince posthumously, right after his death in 2016. No one else has had four to time since the card was instituted in 1963.
“Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” also marked the most debut of the three re-recordings Swift has released to date, in her campaign to remake all of the albums she originally recorded for her former label, Big Machine. “Red (Taylor’s Version)” is now in second place, having come out of the gate with 605,000 at the end of 2021. The first in this series, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)”, had a less auspicious arc, with 291,000 beginning 2021, with the lower number partly due to the fact that the coveted vinyl version was not yet available at the time of general release. This one, like the others, debuted easily at No. 1 anyway.
Sales accounted for a large chunk of “Speak Now’s” total, at a time when most No. 1 albums derive almost all of their strength from streaming. Actual sales of the album in its first week amounted to 507,000 copies. Of these, vinyl sales accounted for 268,500. Billboard says this is the second-best week for a vinyl album since SoundScan began tracking them in 1991. The only LP to have a better opening week at past 32 years is Swift’s “Midnights,” which sold 575,000 copies on vinyl out of the gate last October.
And in overall opening numbers, including streaming and sales, “Speak Now” is the biggest album since “Midnights,” which was released with 1.58 million units in its first week.
His unit number of 716,000 for “Speak Now” is the fifth-highest arc in the past five years, Billboard also points out. Swift’s albums account for four of those first five albums, with Adele’s “30” in fourth place, just ahead of “Speak Now.”
Not to mention, other albums slipping into the top 10 amid Swift’s onslaught include Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” at No. 2 (with 104,000 units) and “Dangerous” at No. 6; Lil Uzi Vert’s “Pink Tape” at No. 3 (down two spots from its No. 1 arc last week, with 61,000 in Week 2); “Genesis” by Peso Pluma at #4 and “A Gift and a Curse” by Gunna at #9.
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