SHANGHAI, CHINA – NOVEMBER 10: Taylor Swift performs live on stage during the 1989 World Tour Live … [+]
Taylor Swift is back at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 1989 (Taylor’s Version). The re-recorded take of her pop blockbuster 1989 debuts in first place on the ranking of the top-consumed albums in the U.S. with the largest starting sum of 2023 by a significant margin.
1989 (Taylor’s Version) opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 1.653 million equivalent album units shifted. That sum includes 1.359 million pure purchases, a figure that’s essentially unheard of in today’s streaming-focused music industry.
Swift fans purchased 693,000 copies of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) on vinyl alone, helping her reset the all-time record for the largest sales week on the format since Luminate (formerly Nielsen) began tracking wax sales in 1991. She broke her own record, previously set by her 2022 studio effort Midnights, with her newest recording.
Swift resets the record for the largest debut of 2023 on the Billboard 200. Before 1989 (Taylor’s Version), that honor belonged to another one of Swift’s recent releases, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). That title arrived at No. 1 on the chart this summer with 716,000 equivalent units shifted.
That means that 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is the first album to launch atop the Billboard 200 with one million units in 2023. In fact, it’s the latest title to hit that sum in just seven days since Swift’s own Midnights arrived at No. 1 on the chart with more than 1.5 million equivalent units in late 2022.
As 1989 (Taylor’s Version) debuts atop the Billboard 200, there’s a good chance that the set will produce a No. 1 hit on the Hot 100 as well. Billboard will announce the top 10 most-consumed songs in the U.S. in a matter of hours, and it seems likely that one of the “From The Vault” tunes—the previously unreleased tracks that were written during the initial 1989 sessions and added to 1989 (Taylor’s Version)—will open in first place on the competitive chart. If that does happen, Swift will once again claim a very important chart double.
