Taylor Swift is setting some high chart benchmarks with the release of her “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” album.
Not only has it debuted at No. 1 with the biggest numbers of the year so far for any release, but it’s one of four albums she now has in the top 10 of the album chart.
According to Billboard, that’s the first time a woman has done that in the entire six-decade history of there being an album chart — and she’s one of only three artists to ever accomplish the feat.
Swift also set a record for the female artist with the most No. 1 albums in history: She now has a dozen, moving ahead of Barbra Streisand, with whom she was formerly tied with 11 each.
“Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” bowed on top of the Billboard 200 with 716,000 album-equivalent units. That number ensured that it wasn’t even a photo finish in this year’s opening-week derby, as the previous best figure was held by Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time,” which debuted in March with 501,000.
The other three albums Taylor Swift has in her triumphant quadrilogy in the top 10 are 2022’s “Midnights” at No. 5, 2019’s “Lover” at No. 7 and 2020’s “Folklore” at No. 10.
“Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” also set a mark for the biggest debut number of the three re-recordings Swift has released to date, in her campaign to remake all of the albums she originally recorded for her former label, Big Machine. “Red (Taylor’s Version)” is now in second place, having come out of the gate with 605,000 in late 2021. The first in this series, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” had a less auspicious bow, with 291,000 in early 2021, with the lesser number partly accounted for by the fact that the much-coveted vinyl version was not yet available at the time of general release. That one, like the others, easily debuted at No. 1 anyway.
Her 716,000 unit number for “Speak Now” is the fifth-largest bow of the last five years, Billboard additionally points out. Swift albums account for four out of five of those debuts, with Adele’s “30” in there as the fourth-biggest, just ahead of “Speak Now.”