Taylor Swift‘s ‘Midnights’ has earned the singer her 11th Number One album on the US Billboard 200 chart.
Released on October 21, the record arrived with the biggest week for any album in almost seven years, selling 1.578million copies according to Luminate (via Billboard). The last album to achieve such a high number of sales in its first week of release was Adele‘s ’25’ in 2015, which broke the scale with more than 3million units.
The achievement sees Swift tied with Barbra Streisand as the female artist with the most Number One US albums. They, alongside Drake, The Beatles, Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen, are the only artists with more than 10 Number One LPs.
As per Billboard, ‘Midnights’ is already the year’s top-selling album by overall sales and boasts the largest sales week since Swift released ‘Reputation’ in 2017. It’s also the biggest sales week for a vinyl album in recent years.
There are four different cover artworks for ‘Midnights’ vinyl and CDs – which collectively form a completed picture – that may have contributed to its overall success in unit sales. Swift also promptly followed the album’s release with an extended edition containing seven extra songs, dubbed the ‘3am Edition’.
It’s the latest in a string of records Swift has broken with her 10th studio album, smashing Spotify’s record for the most-streamed album in a day upon its release. It also broke Apple Music’s record for biggest pop album of all time by first-day streams, and Amazon Music’s most first-day album streams globally of any artist.
Swift also went on to achieve an Official Chart Double, with ‘Midnights’ and its single ‘Anti-Hero’ claiming Number One spots on both the Official Albums and Singles Charts at the same time.
Speaking about the album in a four-star review, NME‘s Hannah Mylrea heralded ‘Midnights’ as Swift’s “shimmering return to pure pop”.
“The pop titan’s tenth record pivots away from her mellow lockdown creations and recent re-recording project, offering up brighter, future-facing sounds,” she wrote.