Taylor Swift’s streak at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with “The Tortured Poets Department” continues unabated, as the album fended off a strong challenge from a new Zach Bryan release to spend its 12th consecutive week atop that chart, breaking or tying a couple of records in the process.
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With the latest No. 1 ranking for “Tortured Poets,” Swift’s album broke the record previously set by Whitney Houston’s “Whitney” for the most initial consecutive weeks at No. 1 from an album by a female artist. That 1987 Houston album spent its first 11 weeks on top of the chart before dropping off.
As more contemporary benchmarks go: “Tortured Poets” is now tied with Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” for the collection that has spent the most consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200 in this century. (Altogether, Wallen’s latest blockbuster album spent a whopping 19 weeks at No. 1 toward the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024, but only the first 12 of those were consecutive.)
Amid these other benchmarks, Swift also broke a personal record this week, for the album of hers that has spent the most weeks at No 1 on the Billboard 200, consecutively or otherwise. As of last week, “Tortured Poets” was tied with her previous chart leaders, “Fearless” and “1989,” with 11 weeks each, and now the latest album has moved ahead of those.
Bryan’s album looked like it had a chance of unseating Swift. But “The Great American Bar Scene,” which registered 137,000 album-equivalent units, was ultimately not a match for the 163,000 comparable units for Swift’s album in its 12th week, per Luminate data reported by Billboard .
With the streak Swift is on, she stands a chance of tying or breaking one record or another almost every week that her album is able to hold on at No. 1. (A month ago, Variety broke down some of the different records she stands to break in this story .) As noted, if she holds on one more week, which would be her lucky 13th, she will beat Wallen’s high mark for the most consecutive weeks out of the box this century. And if “Poets” keeps on going still one further week after that, to 14, she’ll break the all-time record for initial consecutive weeks at No. 1, breaking an ancient Stevie Wonder mark from the ’70s.
Can she keep the streak going next week, and beyond? That will likely depend on the strength of Eminem’s “The Death of Slim Shady,” which came out Friday — more on that in a moment.
Although he probably didn’t mean to, Zach Bryan may have done Swift a favor by patriotically releasing his album on the 4th of July, which was a Thursday, one day before the start of a new chart period. So “The Great American Bar Scene” actually made its debut on the chart last week at a modest No. 17, based on the 32,000 units it racked up on that one charting day, a decent start that didn’t count toward this latest chart. But it’s not a certainty that Bryan would have beat Swift’s mark if he had released his record on a Friday.
Bryan was also hobbled, as competition goes, by not yet having any physical copies of his album in the marketplace. The CD and vinyl editions of “Great American Bar Scene” are still months off, not coming out till Oct. 11. Clearly it was more important to the singer to get his album out in a timely fashion than wait for a big day-and-date simultaneous release.
Swift, meanwhile, benefitted from putting still more variant limited editions of her album into the marketplace, as has been her wont. In results from Luminate that were reported Sunday by Billboard , weekly full-album sales for “Tortured Poets” soared from 35,000 the previous week to 90,000 this week, a substantial 154% uptick.
The list of different limited-edition versions of the album that contributed to that 90,000 sales total was a long one. On Thursday, for a period of just hours, Swift released three digital variants, each including one separate live-from-Stockholm acoustic track as a bonus on top of the standard-edition tracklist, for $4.99 each. Those didn’t add massive amounts to her tally, but the album’s digital download sales did jump to 19,000 copies sold, a 1,266% increase. The bigger factor in her overall total was a 127% increase in CD sales, to 67,000 discs sold, as a result of seven earlier CD variants getting briefly restocked in her webstore for a few hours last Sunday (including a signed edition).
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Swift’s streaming numbers also got some help from the release to digital providers of two remixes of the album’s lead single, “Fortnight,” which features Post Malone. Despite the release of those two tracks, her streaming total fell slightly, by 7%, from the previous week — although still amounting to a gigantic 94.83 million on-demand streams for the album, per Billboard.
Bryan was at least able to claim one significant No. 1, then, easily replacing Swift at the top of Billboard’s Streaming Albums chart. He registered a remarkable 163.87 million on-demand streams of the 19 songs from “Great American Bar Scene.”
Another notch for Bryan to put on his belt: He currently has two albums in the top 10. The second one is last year’s self-titled “Zach Bryan,” which rises from No. 12 to No. 10. (It marks his second time having two albums in the top 10 at once.)
Having Swift and Bryan at Nos. 1-2 atop the Billboard 200 pushed Wallen’s still strong “One Day at a Time” to No. 3, with 69,000 album-equivalent units for the week. And, like Bryan, he has two albums in the top 10, the second one being “Dangerous: The Double Album” at No. 6.
Albums by Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan held onto their previous weekly positions at Nos. 4-5, respectively. The top 10 was rounded out by albums by Noah Kahan, Shaboozey and Megan Thee Stallion (whose “Megan” dipped from No. 2 to No. 9 in its second week out).
How likely is it that Swift will break further records, by extending her consecutive weeks at No. 1 to 13, 14 or even more weeks?
Eminem’s “Death of Slim Shady” is the main immediate obstacle to that, and it’s a big question mark. His previous album, 2020’s “Music to Be Murdered By,” debuted with 279,000 units — and if he were to do that well again, it’s hard to imagine how Swift could up her weekly total to beat it, even by putting out a slew of new variants. However, it’s highly unlikely the new Eminem album will debut with anything near the previous record’s premiere tally… if only because he does not have any physical editions out to help boost his numbers. When “Music to Be Murdered By” registered that great first week, a big chunk of that total — 117,000 units — came via traditional album sales, something that won’t be as strong with only digital albums to sell at the moment.
Interest in “The Death of Slim Shady” has been intense, albeit perhaps more dispersed, as “Music to Be Murdered By” was a surprise release with little advance buildup, whereas “Death” was given a more traditional, long rollout, with the single “Houdini” being released six weeks ahead of the album. As of Sunday, “Houdini” remained Eminem’s highest-charting song on Spotify’s daily US Top 50, at No. 10, followed by seven tracks in the chart’s teens.
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