One year becomes another. The sun rises in the east. And Taylor Swift is once again number 1 on the Billboard album chart.
“Evermore”, Swift’s second surprise pandemic record, reached its third time at the top of the chart, in sales and flows during the first seven days of 2021. “Evermore”, which has now been on the air for four weeks, had the equivalent of 56,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen Music / MRC data, including 50 million streams and 16,000 copies sold as a complete package. It was helped by the disappearance of holiday playlists and the release of a “deluxe” version that added two new songs.
Swift started last year with the expectation of touring stadium dates to publicize his 2019 album, “Lover”. These programs – like virtually every other in the multibillion-dollar global tourism industry – were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. But Swift remained busy, releasing a new album, “Folklore”, in July, and “Evermore”, last month.
“Folklore” and his songs won five of Swift’s six Grammy nominations, and the album ended up selling nearly 1.3 million copies as complete packages last year. This was more than any other release to that extent, although Lil Baby’s “My Turn” was last year’s most popular album. Counting sales and flows, “My Turn” had the equivalent of 2.6 million sales in 2020, while “Folklore” had 2.2 million, according to the year-end report by Nielsen / MRC.
Also this week, Lil Durk’s “The Voice” moved up one spot to number 2, Pop Smoke’s “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon” is at No. 3 and Ariana Grande’s “Positions” is at No. 4. Last week’s best seller, Playboi Carti’s “Whole Lotta Red” fell four places to fifth in its second week.