After its surprise announcement and release 24 hours later, Taylor Swift’s Folklore had a monster first week, the album raking in 846,000 equivalent album units — a feat that gave her the most No. 1 debuts and the third-most No. 1 albums among female artists. She scored the top spot for a second consecutive week, and now she’s done it a third time.
In landing a third week at No. 1, Swift becomes the first woman to spend her first three weeks at No. 1 since 2018, after Lady Gaga did the same with her A Star Is Born joint album with Bradley Cooper. Swift’s continued reign can be credited to the newly-released CD edition of Folklore. The feat also makes her the second overall artist to spend their first three weeks at the top of the Billboard albums charts, after The Weeknd spent four weeks at No. 1 following the release of his After Hours album. Prior to The Weeknd, the last album to achieve this was Drake’s 2018 album Scorpion, which spent its first five weeks atop the charts.
Swift’s latest feat comes a day after she publicly criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of USPS issues in a pair of tweets. “Donald Trump’s ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely,” she wrote in her post. “Request a ballot early. Vote early.”
(via Billboard)