Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) has now gone down in the books as the singer’s best first week ever for an album. The release tops the Billboard 200 with 1.653 million equivalent album units. This is ahead of her previous personal best of 1.578 million for ‘Midnights’, which was released just over a year ago.
Of course, the only Swift album to do better in its first week is the original ‘1989’ – Big Machine’s version, circa 2014 – which debuted nine years ago with a then astonishing 1.297 million units.
According to Billboard, this is officially the biggest first week for any album since 2015, when Adele’s 25 debuted with 3.482 million album units. It’s also the sixth biggest week for an album since Luminate’s predecessor, SoundScan, began providing instant weekly data in 1991.
Traditional album sales accounted for 1.359 million of the week’s total of 1.653 million. Physical sales were a big draw, with five different variants of the vinyl version alone. Limited edition CDs and even a cassette edition were available, adding to the collectibility factor in an era when streaming is the overwhelming way most new releases are consumed.
News of the latest album’s success comes as the film ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” was still raking in millions over the weekend after a month in cinemas. Over the weekend, the film’s fourth, it took in $13.5 million, bringing its North American total to date to $166 million.
Swift has, of course, guaranteed massive interest in her “Taylor’s Versions” by tagging previously unheard “Vault” tracks. Several of these songs are expected to debut in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 when the chart’s top positions are announced on Monday. She’s believed to have a shot at a No. 1 single with the Vault track “Is It Over Now?”, which continues to top Spotify’s daily US Top 50 chart, 11 days after all the new material was released.
What’s surprising about the big numbers for the “1989” remake – even for those with sky-high expectations for a Swift release – is that it’s more than double the previous high for any of her previous “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings. The previous best for a “TV” album came just three and a half months ago when “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” debuted in July with 716,000 units.
The blockbuster debut for ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ also comes well ahead of the first weeks in recent years for ‘Lover’ (867,000 units in 2019), ‘Folklore’ (846,000 units in 2020), ‘Evermore’ (329,000 units, also in 2020), ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’ (291,000 units in 2021) and ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ (605,000 units, also in 2021).
If the actual number is surprising, the fact that ‘1989’ would be the most successful of Swift’s re-releases is not. “1989, her fifth album, is widely considered to be her most popular, even if it lags behind Fearless, her second release, in terms of actual sales. The original ‘1989’, released in 2014, was certified nine-times platinum by the RIAA, while ‘Fearless’ crossed the 10 million mark to earn a diamond certification.
That this version of ‘1989’ would either surpass or come close to Swift’s previous highs was evident from the first day streaming results alone. Spotify announced shortly after the album’s debut that it had become the service’s most-streamed album in a single day in 2023… and that, at the same time, Swift herself had broken a record by becoming the artist with the most streams in a single day in the streaming service’s history.
The original Big Machine release of ‘1989’ has been hovering in the top 20 of the Billboard 200 for the past few weeks, reflecting both interest in the upcoming remake as well as the traffic generated by the ‘Era Tour’ film. Since she began releasing re-recordings in 2021, there’s been a pattern of consumption for her Big Machine albums spiking just before the “Taylor’s Version” album comes out, followed by a sharp drop for those older versions once most fans have moved on to the new ones.
Even though the Eras Tour movie is still in cinemas around the world, the actual tour is about to resume after a break. Swift resumes her concert schedule in four days with shows in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 9-11 November, before heading to Brazil. Last week, Swift added three dates in Vancouver, B.C., which represent the final known stretch of the 2024 dates, on 6-8 December next year – although there’s no indication that this will actually be the tour’s finale.
