Taylor Swift ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ breaks nine-year record

Taylor Swift breaks a record of nine years with her latest album The Tortured Poets Department.

According to Billboard and data per Luminate, the newly released album skyrocketed with 2.61 million album-equivalent units in the first week of its debut.

This figure accounts to be the best one-week number for any album in nine years.

The last album to ever reach such a number Adele’s 25, which bagged 3.482 million in 2015, a figure that is considered to be unbeatable keeping in light the changes that have occurred in consumption since then.

The 2.61 million number leaves behind Swift’s previous best, which was 1.653 million units for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) in its first week last October. Before that, her highest score had been Midnights, which bagged 1.578 million in late 2022.

With 891.37 million on-demand streams for the album, Swift also broke the record for most streams in a single week. 

That's around 150 million more than Drake's Scorpion, which set the previous record in its first week of release back in 2018 with 745.92 million streams, according to Luminate.