It’s official, not just the fan story: Taylor’s Swift’s eighth album, “Folklore”, fell as the No. 1 album of 2020, ending the year with 2.3 million album units. In the end, he took the lead on Lil Baby’s second album, which made stars, “My Turn”, which came in second with 2.1 million in the album-equivalent unit classic.
The results come through Rolling Stone, which divided the music consumption data for the year into several different year-end charts, with the differences providing some interesting points of comparison. For example: Swift is also at the top of the list of the biggest sellers of the year – and Lil Baby is nowhere in the top 10. On the other hand, Lil Baby easily landed at the top of the ranking of the biggest streamers of the year – and Swift is absent of those first 10.
In the overall list of the top 100 albums of 2020 – representing a combination of streaming and sales data – Swift and Lil Baby’s albums were followed in the top 10 by the efforts of Pop Smoke, Weeknd, Juice WRLD, Post Malone, Roddy Ricch, Luke Combs, Harry Styles and, having his chance to take tenth place in the year, the “Hamilton” cast album.
Country star Combs lost two albums in the top 10 at the end of the year, as his 8th place, “What You See is What You Get”, is closely followed in 11th place by an older release, “This One’s for You” . Juice WRLD was the other artist to have two albums in the top 20, as his number 5 “Legends Never Die” was accompanied by an older album, “Goodbye & Good Riddance”, in 17th place.
Swift could also have had two albums in the top 20 if the year had only lasted a few more weeks; its mid-December release, “Evermore”, ended the year in 63rd position, based on just a few weeks of sales and streaming. (His mid-2019 album, “Lover” had enough legs in 2020 to finish 28th this year.)
Completing the overall top 25 are Lil Uzi Vert, Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, DaBaby, Eminem, Halsey, Jhené Aiko, Drake, Morgan Wallen, Justin Bieber, Lewis Capaldi, Post Malone and Polo G.
For the complete list of the 100 best albums of the year, click here.
The catalog album with the highest consumption was not Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors”, as you would expect from its renewed popularity on TikTok. This honor belonged to the Eagles’ self-titled debut in 1972, which led the field of classic rock, reaching 46th position in the year. Its total in 2020 was 666,000, so maybe someone have I’ve been sleeping in the devil’s bed.
On the separate chart that measures only pure sales of complete albums – which is obviously a downturn, but still potent for certain artists and demographics – Swift’s “Folklore” was succeeded by retail successes from Weeknd, BTS, Juice WRLD, Harry Styles, Lady Gaga, Halsey, Swift again (with “Evermore”), Eminem and Kenny Chesney. As you can see, only one hip-hop album, Juice WRLD’s, was a huge sales force.
Meanwhile, at the end of the year on-demand streaming chart, hip-hop accounted for eight of the top ten. The success of Lil Baby’s charts was followed by Pop Smoke, Juice WRLD, Roddy Ricch, Post Malone, Weeknd, Lil Uzi Vert, Bad Bunny, DaBaby and the cast album “Hamilton”.
How many transmissions on demand did do the songs on Lil Baby’s hit album increase? Let’s say it was fine in Carl Sagan territory: more than 3 billion.
(You can see these lists and further analysis of Rolling Stone data here.)