Taylor Swift Scores UK Chart Double, Breaks Records With ‘Midnights’ And ‘Anti-Hero’
‘Midnights,’ her ninth consecutive No.1 album in the UK, becomes the country’s fastest-selling album of the year to date.
Taylor Swift today achieves the rare feat of a UK chart double, entering the album survey at No.1 with Midnights and the singles countdown with its track “Anti-Hero.”
Midnights, her ninth consecutive No.1 album in the UK, becomes the country’s fastest-selling album of the year to date with 204,000 chart sales, according to the Official Charts Company. That’s more than twice as many as her previous best album total of 90,300 in the week of release of her 1989 album, in 2014. Swift demolishes 2022’s previous fastest-seller, Harry Styles’ Harry’s House, which opened with 113,000 chart sales.
Her opening tally is the highest since Adele’s 30, which recorded 261,000 last November. It’s also the most-streamed album in a chart week this week, with 72.5 million streams, surpassing Styles’ 53.9m earlier this year. Midnights beats Arctic Monkeys’ The Car to the top spot despite the latter album also making a powerful start, with over 100,000 chart sales.
In yet another new record, Swift now overtakes Madonna for the fastest sequence of nine UK No.1 albums by a female artist. She has achieved the feat in exactly ten years, starting with Red in October 2012; Madonna took 21 years to reach nine chart-toppers. The Beatles are overall leaders of this list, with nine No.1s in five years and seven months in between Please Please Me (May 1963) and The Beatles (aka The White Album) (December 1968).
“Anti-Hero” becomes Swift‘s second UK No.1 single, following 2017’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” The arrival of the new album leads two further tracks into the singles Top 5, “Lavender Haze” at No.3 and “Snow On The Beach,” with Lana Del Rey, at No.4.
The last female artist to enter the UK singles and album charts at No.1 simultaneously was Miley Cyrus, more than nine years ago, with “Wrecking Ball” and Bangerz respectively, in August 2013.
Buy or stream Taylor Swift’s Midnights.
