TWELVE-TIME Grammy winner Taylor Swift has broken another record, this time with her “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” album. She surpassed the record of the King of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley.
On December 31, Billboard announced that Swift bested Presley for having the most weeks at no. 1 on the Billboard 200 as a soloist across all her 13 chart-topping releases.
Her “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” album remained on top of the chart for 68 weeks, exceeding Presley’s record of 67 weeks at no.1 across his 10 chart-topping albums that spanned from 1956-2002.
According to Billboard, the most popular albums of the week were ranked “based on a multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units,” which comprise its sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
Billboard reported that the 34-year-old singer-songwriter first landed on top of the Billboard 200 with her “Fearless” album released in 2008. It was followed by “Speak Now,” “Red,” “1989,” “Reputation,” “Lover,” “Folklore,” “Evermore,” “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” “Red (Taylor’s Version),” “Midnights,” “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” and now “1989 (Taylor’s Version).”
The “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” album contains 21 tracks, including the 16 re-recorded versions of “Blank Space,” “Style,” “Shake It Off,” “Bad Blood,” and “Wildest Dreams,” among others.
The other five were the “From the Vault” tracks that she unveiled in September 2023 after challenging her fans in a puzzle game.
The album was released on October 27, 2023, the same day the original version was released in 2014.
Swift, who was born in 1989, described the “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” as an album that she “love[s] so dearly” when she announced its release in an Instagram post.
In a handwritten note, the singer said, “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the magic you would sprinkle on my life for so long.”
“This moment is a reflection of the woods we’ve wandered through and all this love between us still glowing in the darkest dark,” she continued.
Smashing own records
Citing initial reports from Luminate, Billboard reported in November 2023 that Swift sold over 1.1 million copies of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” in the United States in the first six days of release.
Her vinyl sales reached 580,000, which Billboard said was the largest sales week for a vinyl album since 1991. With this feat, she broke her own modern-era vinyl sales record, surpassing “Midnights” which sold 575,000 copies in its opening week.
The American singer-songwriter also broker her own record in Spotify in October 2023 when she was announced as the “most-streamed artist in a single day” in Spotify history and her “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” album being the “most-streamed album in a single day in 2023 so far” in the digital music platform.
She replaced herself as the most-streamed artist record holder after first capturing the title in October 2022 with her 10th studio album “Midnights.”
Swift was then named as Spotify’s top global artist for 2023, with more than 26.2 billion global streams since January 1.
