Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Clocks 14th Week at No. 1 on Billboard 200

August 12, 2024 E Jazz Reporter

Music

Plus: Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 flies in at No. 2, while Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess hits a new high.

Taylor Swift

Beth Garrabrant

Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department clocks a 14th week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated Aug. 17), with 142,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 8 (up 98%) according to Luminate.

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The last album to spend at least 14 weeks at No. 1 was Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, which logged 19 total nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 between March 2023 and this March. The last album by a woman to spend at least 14 total weeks at No. 1 was Adele’s 21, which earned 24 nonconsecutive weeks on top in 2011-12.

Also in the top 10 of the new Billboard 200, Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 debuts at No. 2 with 107,000 equivalent album units, marking the 13th Ye album to reach the top two (his entirety of charting releases), while Ty Dolla $ign ups his tally of top 10s to three.

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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 Aug. 18, 2024-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Aug. 13. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.

Of The Tortured Poets Department’s 142,000 units earned in the week ending Aug. 8, album sales comprise 84,000 (up 606%), SEA units comprise 57,500 (equaling 75.43 million on-demand official streams of the set’s widely available deluxe edition’s 31 songs) and TEA units comprise 500. Poets is No. 2 on the Top Streaming Albums chart (behind Wallen’s One Thing at a Time) and No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart.

Poets’ album sales in the latest tracking week were bolstered by a number of drivers. The set was released in five new digital album variants via Swift’s official webstore for a limited time, each containing the standard album’s 16 songs, along with one exclusive bonus track for $4.99 each (one album contained a “first draft phone memo” version of “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” while the other four contained one live track each from recent stops during her The Eras Tour). In addition, for a limited time, the store restocked three previously available digital album variants with exclusive bonus cuts, and a signed CD edition. Her store also staged a brief sale pricing promotion, whereby 16 previously available physical variants of the album were all discounted by 13% (as 13 is Swift’s favorite number).

With Poets — Swift’s longest-leading album on the Billboard 200 — she adds her 83rd 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 No. 1 albums. (She’s tied with Jay-Z for the most No. 1s among soloists.)

At No. 2 on the new Billboard 200, Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 swoops in with 107,000 equivalent album units earned. The album was released on Saturday (Aug. 3). It’s the long-awaited sequel to the chart-topping Vultures 1, which opened atop the Feb. 24-dated chart with 148,000 units. Of the new album’s first-week figure, album sales comprise 60,500 in album sales, SEA units comprise 46,000 (equaling 50.44 million on-demand official streams of the standard set’s songs) and TEA units comprise 500 units. Vultures 2 also bows at No. 6 on the Top Streaming Albums chart and No. 2 on the Top Album Sales chart.

The opening sales of Vultures 2 were aided by its availability across a widely available standard explicit edition, and a late-in-the-week-released clean edition (on Aug. 8). Ye’s official webstore also issued five additional explicit digital album variants on Wednesday (Aug. 7) and Thursday (Aug. 8), each containing the standard album’s 16 tracks, along with one exclusive studio bonus track per album. All digital albums on Ye’s webstore sold for $5 each. The Vultures 2 album, both clean and explicit, was also discounted to $4.99 in the iTunes Store in the tracking week.

Vultures 2 was originally slated for release on March 8.

Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess climbs to a new high, as it rises from its prior No. 4 best to No. 3 with 64,000 equivalent album units earned (up 20%). The album’s ascent comes after Roan’s rousing reception at Lollapalooza on Aug. 1.

Wallen’s chart-topping One Thing at a Time dips 2-4 with 63,000 equivalent album units (down 2%), while Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft is steady at No. 5 with 57,000 units (up 8%).

Charli XCX’s Brat bolts 9-6 with 56,000 equivalent album units earned (up 39%), following the release of the album’s “Guess” remix with Eilish on Aug. 1.

Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene falls 3-7 (51,000 equivalent album units; down 16%), Wallen’s former leader Dangerous: The Double Album rises 11-8 (just over 37,000; down less than 1%), Noah Kahan’s Stick Season lifts 10-9 (a little more than 37,000; down 5%) and the Twisters: The Album soundtrack drops 8-10 (37,000; down 16%).

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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