“The Tortured Poets Department,” by Taylor Swift makes its grand entrance at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart (dated May 4). Taylor now ties Jay-Z’s Record for the most U.S. Billboard 200 #1 albums as Swift’s latest album.
Both she and Jay now have 14 chart toppers as a solo artist while The Beatles hold the record with 19 No. 1s.
“The Tortured Poets Department” released April 19 via Taylor and Universal Music Group amassed an impressive 2.61 million equivalent album units in the U.S. for the week ending April 25. Of that amount Traditional album sales, including digital downloads, CDs, vinyl LPs, and cassettes, accounted for 1.914 million of these units. 859,000 Vinyl sales units contributed to the overall figure and the deluxe edition of the album, featuring 31 tracks, garnered a staggering 891.34 million on-demand official streams.
The album achieved the largest streaming week on record, the second-largest week for an album (in terms of total equivalent album units earned) since December 2014, and the third-largest sales week (based on traditional album sales) in the modern era (since electronic sales tracking began in 1991). Furthermore, it stands as the largest sales week for an album on vinyl in the modern streaming era.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the week’s most popular albums in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, measured in equivalent album units and compiled by Luminate. These units encompass album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
For clarity, each unit represents either one album sale, 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.
“The Tortured Poets Department” is Swift’s 11th studio album released first as a standard 16-song digital download album then Swift later unveiled an expanded 31-song edition of the album just two hours after its initial release, available for digital download and streaming according to Deadline.
The album also debuted at #1 on UK Official Albums chart, boasting the highest first-week sales in seven years.
Additionally, “The Tortured Poets Department” has etched its name in Spotify history by surpassing one billion streams within a single week, setting a new record for the most-streamed album in a single day, reportedly exceeding 200 million streams.
Swift posted her reaction on Instagram to the news of her latest #1 album saying, “My mind is blown. I’m completely floored by the love you’ve shown this album.
2.6 million ARE YOU ACTUALLY SERIOUS?? Thank you for listening, streaming, and welcoming Tortured Poets into your life. Feeling completely overwhelmed.
I was already so fired up to get back to the tour but you doing THIS?? May 9th can’t come soon enough 🤍.”
