Only 11 months after her album Lover, Taylor Swift surprised fans by dropping a quickly-made follow-up, Folklore. Recorded in the midst of her quarantine, the album’s quick arrival, she revealed in an Instagram post, could be credited to her gut “telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world.” In its first 24 hours the album surpassed a million global sales, enough to score it the No. 1 spot on the Billboard albums chart.
With 846,000 equivalent album units, the album’s success earns Swift her seventh consecutive No. 1 album. Of those units, 615,000 account for album sales and 218,000 for streaming equivalent units. By earning her seventh No. 1 album, Swift is now tied with Janet Jackson for the third-most no. 1 albums behind Barbra Streisand (with 11) and Madonna (with nine). The album also gives her the most No. 1 debuts among fellow female artists.
On top of all that, Folkore now holds the record for the biggest first week in 2020, surpassing the previous number set two weeks ago by Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die. Other accolades for Folklore in its first week include the biggest sales week for an album since Swift’s Lover, becoming 2020’s top-selling album, and making Swift the first act to have seven different albums sell 500,000 copies or more in a single week.
Elsewhere on the charts, Logic’s final album No Pressure comes in at No. 2 with 221,000 equivalent album units, giving the late rapper his seventh top-10 release. Juice WRLD’s Legends Never Die pops in at No. 3 107,000 units sold. Pop Smoke’s Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon came in at No. 4 and original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical at No. 5.
Read our review of Taylor Swift’s Folklore here.
(via Billboard)
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.