Taylor Swift has done it again and has broken records for her amazing surprise 8th album folklore. The album has said to be so secret the employees on her record label only found out about its existence hours before its release. However, despite the secret release it has broken records within its first week on sale.
On Spotify alone folklore received 80.6 million streams in a single day which is the highest ever tally for a female artist. In the US, folklore has become the best-selling record of the year with over 846,000 copies sold to date, this also makes Swift the first artist ever in US chart history to have seven albums sell more than 500,000 copies in a week, and the first female artist to have seven albums debut at the top spot.
The single ‘Cardigan’ from the album also took the top spot on the Hot 100 charts, making Swift the first ever person to debut at the top of the album and singles chart in the same week. The album hasn’t just taken the US by storm it has hit the top charts in the UK, Finland, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, Belgium and Ireland.
Swift has also broken records in Ireland with this being her 5th number one album meaning she has overtaken Madonna and Beyoncé for the top spot of most records sold by a female artist in the 21st century.
In the UK, Swift now has three top 10 singles with ‘Cardigan’ at 6, ‘Exile’ featuring Bon Iver at 8, and ‘The 1’ at number 10. However, she would have taken up more places in the Top 100 list if the chart rules currently didn’t prevent any artist from having more than three tracks in the Top 100 at the same time. This means 15 out of the 16-track album would have had entries on the Top 100 chart – the entries would be number 13, 15, 18, 21, 24, 31, 36, 37, 40, 42, 45, 51.
Swift’s folklore has also received the best reviews for an album in her career with The Edge where we rated the album five stars and called it “humble, meaningful and remarkable”. The album is also expected to see a second sales boost when CDs and vinyl copies become available – does this mean Swift can break even more records?
Watch the music video for ‘Cardigan’ below:
