It’s anything but a Cruel Summer for Taylor Swift as the pop superstar has hit a new level of success.
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Swift’s latest re-recording of an early album, has debuted at the top spot of the Billboard 200, making it her 12th album to reach No. 1. And no female artist in history has had that many top-selling records.
Swift unseats Barbra Streisand as the leading female artist.
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) sold 716,000 equivalent album units for the week ending July 13, according to Luminate. Of that measurement, 506,600 were traditional album sales (410,000 physical and 96,600 digital). The remaining amount was calculated from streaming totals.
The album, which includes hits such as “Mean” and “Sparks Fly,” is already the biggest album release of 2023—and it’s the best-selling album since, well, Swift’s last studio album, Midnights.
At present, Swift has four albums in the Billboard Top 10, something no living artist has done since 1966 (when Herb Albert achieved the feat). The only other musician to do so was Prince, immediately after his death in 2016.
Swift’s love story with fans goes beyond album sales this year. Her Eras tour continues to break records, having become so important to the economy that she received a mention in the latest report from the Federal Reserve, which noted that Swift’s concerts supercharged Philadelphia’s tourism revenue despite a lull in the industry overall.
The tour has also wreaked havoc on Ticketmaster, with the service unable to keep up with demand in the U.S. last year, due to bots. And just last week, Ticketmaster France crashed when more than 1 million fans tried to get in on the pre-sale event for the tour’s European leg.
