Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version), “Is It Over Now?” Debut At #1 On Billboard Charts
Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart this week with 1.653 million equivalent album units in the US. As Billboard reports, that’s the largest sales week for any album since Adele’s 25 debuted with 3.482 million units in 2015.
Since 2015, Swift is the only artist to debut with such large sales numbers. Midnights debuted with 1.578 million units last year. That number also bested Swift’s own Reputation, which had 1.216 million units in 2017. The first-week numbers for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) also are more than double her previous re-recorded release, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), which launched this past July with 716,000 equivalent album units.
The numbers for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) break down into 1.359 million album sales, 288,000 streaming equivalent album units (equals 375.49 million on-demand streams), and 6,000 track equivalent album units (representing individual song sales). As Billboard notes, Swift’s numbers are bolstered by the sheer amount of physical formats 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is available in: “five color vinyl variants, eight CD editions and two cassette editions,” as well as two digital download editions.
Some notes: 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is Swift’s sixth album to have sold at least a million copies in a week; she’s the only act to have done so since electronic sales tracking began in 1991. 1989 (Taylor’s Version) automatically becomes the year’s biggest-selling album so far. And Swift has also broken her own record for the most modern-era vinyl sales in a week with 693,000 copies sold on vinyl — she notched the previous record with Midnights, which sold 575,000 in its first week.
A press release from Republic Records also boasted that 1989 (Taylor’s Version) sold over 3.5 million units worldwide.
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UPDATE (11/6): Swift has also debuted on top of this week’s Hot 100 with “Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version),” one of the vault tracks from the re-recorded 1989. As Billboard reports, she is the only woman to have replaced herself at the top of the charts twice. “Is It Over Now?” replaced “Cruel Summer,” which spent two weeks at #1 four years after release. (She previously took over for herself when “Black Space” topped the chart after “Shake It Off” during 1989‘s original run in 2014.)
“Is It Over Now? (Taylor’s Version) [From The Vault]” had 32 million streams, 4.7 million radio impressions, and sold 5,000 downloads in the past week. It’s Swift’s 11th #1. She’s now tied with Whitney Houston as the artist with the eighth-most #1 hits.