Taylor Swift‘s folklore has debuted at the number one spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart, making it the biggest debut for an album since her last album, Lover, came out a year ago. It’s also the bigggest debut of the year, taking the place of Juice WRLD’s posthumous album Legends Never Die.
The album sold over 846,000 equivalent album units in the first week since its release on July 24. According to Billboard, those album units consist of 615,000 album sales, 218,000 streaming equivalent albums (racking up a total of 289.85 million streams), and 13,000 track equivalent albums. Swift’s eighth studio album is her seventh to debut at the top of the Billboard chart, breaking the record for the most No. 1 debuts among women (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Britney Spears all hold 6, while Jay-Z holds the record for most No. 1 debuts with 14). It also marks the first time an artist has had seven different albums sell at least half a million copies in one week (Swift was previously tied with Eminem).
Folklore is this year’s best-selling album, replacing BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7, which has a total of 574,000 sales since it was released in February. It’s also had the largest streaming week of the year for an album by a woman with a total of 289.85 million on-demand streams. It’s worth noting that Swift achieved this without a traditional album roll-out, announcing the album a day before its release, and despite the fact that the album finds her straying away from her pop-friendly sound to a more indie aesthetic. Read our review of the album here.
