Taylor Swift becomes first woman to have four albums in the top 10

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’s outstanding release has secured Swift’s place in history
Taylor Swift attending the MTV Video Music Awards
Doug Peters / PA
Rachael Davies17 July 2023

Not only did Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) shoot straight into the Top 10 when it was released on July 7, but it has also now confirmed that Taylor Swift will go down in history as the first woman to ever have four albums in the top 10 album chart.

In the six decades that the album chart has been tracked, only two other artists have ever done so: Herb Alpert and Prince. This also means that Swift is the only living person to hold the accolade.

The singer, who is currently promoting her Eras tour, released the album on July 7. It is a re-recording of Speak Now (2010), made as part of her counter to the fight over the ownership of her master recordings, which has seen the singer-songwriter re-release other past albums in order to claim royalties and earnings from them.

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) gained 716,000 album-equivalent units upon its release, soaring past the previous highest figure, held by Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time from March of this year (holding 501,000).

Direct sales across CDs, vinyl, and more accounted for most of the units, which is perhaps surprising when you consider we’re in our streaming era. In actual numbers, 507,000 copies of the 716,000 were from sales.

This achievement marks the most commercially successful debut of any of Swift’s re-recordings.

Red (Taylor’s Version) comes in second place, with 605,000 units in late 2021, while Fearless (Taylor’s Version) came in third with a still-respectable 291,000 in early 2021.

Judging from the rising trend, we could well expect Swift to continue from strength to strength, with three more albums left to re-record, Taylor Swift (2006), 1989 (2014), and Reputation (2017).

Looking at overall opening numbers across all her albums, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is the biggest album since Midnights, which came out with 1.58 million first-week units.

Swift’s albums are four of the top five album debuts of all time, with Adele’s 30 coming in as the fourth-biggest, marginally ahead of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).

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