Taylor Swift's new album dominates Billboard charts

Pop megastar Taylor Swift sold 2.61 million album and streaming units of The Tortured Poets Department during its first week of release in the US, with Billboard calling it “a gigantic debut at No.1” on its 200 albums chart.

Traditional album sales totalled 1.91 million in the week ending April 25 between digital download albums, CDs, cassettes and also included 859,000 vinyl sales, Billboard said, citing data from Luminate.

The album generated 891.34 million on-demand official streams.

The Tortured Poets Department scored the largest streaming week for an album ever and the largest sales week for an album on vinyl in the modern era, Billboard said. It is also the top-selling album so far in 2024.

It was Swift’s 14th chart-topping album, tying with Jay-Z for the most No.1s among soloists.

Swift released the first 16 tracks of Poets on April 19. Two hours later, she surprised fans by revealing it was a double album with 15 more songs.

It was the 11th studio album from the 34-year-old record-setting singer, who won an unprecedented fourth album of the year award at February’s Grammys for Midnights.

Last week, Spotify said Poets was its most-streamed album in a single week, surpassing one billion streams.

Swift also topped the British music charts on Friday, outselling the rest of the top 10 combined and beating the Beatles for the record of fastest artist to rack up 12 UK No.1 albums.

Poets, distributed by Universal Music Group, received mostly positive reviews from critics and fans.

Swift will resume her Eras Tour, the highest-grossing concert tour in history, in Paris in May.

She is among several of music’s top female artists releasing albums in the first half of 2024.

Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter debuted in March, and Dua Lipa and Billie Eilish have releases scheduled for May.