Taylor Swift Spends a Month at No. 1 on Billboard 200 With ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

May 20, 2024 E Jazz Reporter

Music

Plus: Gunna scores his sixth top 10-charting set with the arrival of “One of Wun.”

Taylor Swift

Beth Garrabrant

Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department locks in its fourth consecutive week atop the Billboard 200 (dated May 25), as the set earned 260,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending May 16 (down 8%), according to Luminate. The effort is the first album to spend its first four weeks at No. 1 since Travis Scott’s Utopia led in its first four weeks last summer (Aug. 12-Sept. 2, 2023).

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With 260,000 units earned in Poets’ fourth week, the set scores the largest fourth-week for any album since Adele’s 25 tallied 825,000 units in its fourth frame (chart dated Jan. 2, 2016).

Plus, Swift adds her 73rd career week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, extending her record among soloists (Elvis Presley has the second-most among soloists, with 67). The total encompasses her 14 leaders. (She’s tied with Jay-Z for the most No. 1s among soloists.)

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Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, Gunna lands his sixth top 10-charting effort as One of Wun bows at No. 2.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new May 25, 2024-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on May 21. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.

Of The Tortured Poets Department’s fourth-week unit sum of 260,000, SEA units comprise 217,500 (down 5%, equaling 282.4 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs), traditional album sales comprise 41,000 (down 19%) and TEA units comprise 1,500 (up 18%).

Gunna lands his sixth top 10-charting effort, all of which have reached the top five, as One of Wun enters at No. 2 with 91,000 equivalent album units earned. Of that sum, SEA units comprise 90,000 (equaling 118.52 million on-demand official streams of the set’s songs), while album sales comprise 1,000 and TEA units comprise a negligible sum. Gunna previously visited the top 10 with A Gift & a Curse (No. 3, 2023), DS4Ever (No. 1, 2022), Wunna (No. 1, 2020), Drip or Drown 2 (No. 3, 2019) and Drip Harder (No. 4, 2018).

Gunna announced the new project on April 15, though he did not disclose the May 10 release date for the project until May 3. The album was released only as a streaming set and as a retail-available digital download. A CD and vinyl edition of the album are up for pre-order in Gunna’s official webstore, though no release date for those configurations has been announced, and his store only notes they will both ship “in 2024.”

Morgan Wallen’s chart-topping One Thing at a Time is steady at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 75,000 equivalent album units (up 7%); Future and Metro Boomin’s former No. 1 We Don’t Trust You is also a non-mover at No. 4 (53,000; down 13%); and Wallen’s earlier leader Dangerous: The Double Album climbs 7-5 (44,000; up 6%). Both Wallen albums likely post increases due to the publicity and promotion around the May 10 release of Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” featuring Wallen — even though the song is not on either of the Wallen albums. (The track is expected to be on Post Malone’s upcoming album.) Wallen last had two titles in the top five at the same time on the July 29, 2023-dated chart, when One Thing at a Time and Dangerous were Nos. 2 and 5, respectively.

Noah Kahan’s Stick Season rises 9-6 on the new Billboard 200 with 41,000 equivalent album units (up 2%); SZA’s chart-topping SOS climbs 10-7 (38,000; down 1%); Zach Bryan’s self-titled former No. 1 bumps 12-8 (38,000; up 5%); Benson Boone’s Fireworks & Rollerblades glides 11-9 (just over 35,000; down 4%); and Beyoncé’s chart-topping Cowboy Carter dips 8-10 (35,000; down 14%).

Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.

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