Taylor Swift Notches 7th No. 1 Album, Earns Biggest Debut of 2020

Taylor Swift’s eighth studio album, Folklore, released July 24, has quickly amassed first-week sales of 846,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. And if that sounds like a big number, it is.

First-week Folklore sales place the release at the top of the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, giving Swift her seventh career No. 1 album and the biggest album debut of the year thus far. She outpaced the year’s previous bestseller, K-pop group BTS, who have sold 574,000 copies of Map of the Soul to date since it debuted in February.

With Folklore's No. 1 debut, Swift ties Janet Jackson in the ranking of female artists with the most chart-topping albums and sits just behind Madonna (nine) and Barbra Streisand (11). However, all of Swift’s No. 1 albums have entered the chart directly at the top, making her the leading woman in that particular realm.

Folklore, recorded on the downlow during quarantine and released as a surprise, comes less than a year after Swift's most recent album, Lover, dropped in August of 2019.  The set features collaborations with Aaron Dessner, Bon Iver, Jack Antonoff and a mysterious William Bowery, whom fans believe to be Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn. The video for the first single, "Cardigan," was also released on July 24.

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