Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department Achieves 2nd Biggest Album Opening Ever

Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department is, unsurprisingly, breaking all sorts of records. To start, Swift’s 11th full-length debuts top the Billboard 200 with the second biggest opening week in recorded history. In do so, she has also tied JAY-Z for the most No. 1 albums by a solo artist with 14. Only The Beatles have more chart-toppers with a total of 19.

Specifically, The Tortured Poets Department moved 2.61 million units in its first week, including 1.914 million physical sales — a feat that’s only been topped by Adele, who moved over 3 million units of 25 during its first week. On top of that, Swift has earned the record for most single-week vinyl sales since Luminate began keeping track in 1991, beating the record she set herself last year with 1989 (Taylor’s Version).

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Granted, part of how Swift has accomplished these numbers are the multiple variants she offered for The Tortured Poets Department — including four separate variants for four separate bonus tracks — which loyal Swifties were happy to buy. Still, many of the records TTPD broke are unrelated to the physical editions.

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Since the album’s 31 tracks debuted on April 19th, Swift has earned the record for the most single-day streams of any song on Spotify, as well as the record for single-day album streams. In total, The Tortured Poets Department took the least amount of time of any album to hit 1 billion streams, and — between Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms — has broken the record for the biggest streaming week of all time. Before any of that, it even had a record for the most pre-saved album in Spotify history.

Responding to he record-setting Billboard feat, Swift wrote on social media on Sunday, “My mind is blown. I’m completely floored by the love you’ve shown this album. 2.6 million ARE YOU ACTUALLY SERIOUS?? Thank you for listening, streaming, and welcoming Tortured Poets into your life. Feeling completely overwhelmed. I was already so fired up to get back to the tour but you doing THIS?? May 9th can’t come soon enough.”

With all this under her belt, Swift seems to be moving into her next “era” with a good bit of momentum. In just a few weeks, she’ll resume her historic “Eras Tour” with European and North American legs. Check out her upcoming dates, and grab tickets here.

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For more, check out the review of The Tortured Poets Department by Consequence’s Mary Siroky.

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