Taylor Swift has swiped the pop throne from Harry’s House. According to Billboard, Swift’s Midnights is now 2022’s top-selling album based on 1.140 million overall copies sold. That comfortably surpasses the 633,000 copies of Harry’s House, Styles’ third solo studio album from May. The publication additionally relayed 575,000 Midnights vinyls were sold in the US, the biggest such vinyl week since 1991.
.@taylorswift13's 'Midnights' is already the top-selling album of 2022 by overall sales, with 1.140 million copies sold.
The previous top-seller was @Harry_Styles' 'Harry's House' (633,000 sold this year).
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) October 31, 2022
.@taylorswift13's 'Midnights' sold 575,000 vinyl LPs in the U.S. in the latest tracking week, according to Luminate.
That's the biggest vinyl week for an album on vinyl since Luminate began tracking music sales in 1991.
— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) October 31, 2022
Swift accounts for three — Midnights, Red (Taylor’s Version), and Evermore — of the five biggest vinyl sales weeks during that span. Harry’s House and Adele’s 30 are the other two. Midnights also claimed a spot in the top five biggest-ever streaming weeks for albums, slotting in at third.
Biggest vinyl sales weeks in the modern era, per Luminate:
1. 575k, @taylorswift13 Midnights (11/5/22)
2. 182k, @Harry_Styles Harry's House (6/4/22)
3. 114k, @taylorswift13 Red (Taylor's Version) (11/27/21)
4. 108k, @Adele 30 (12/4/21)
5. 102k, @taylorswift13 Evermore (6/12/21)— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) October 31, 2022
Biggest streaming weeks ever for albums:
1. 745.92m, Scorpion @Drake (7/14/18)
2. 743.67m, Certified Lover Boy @Drake (9/18/21)
3. 549.26m, Midnights @taylorswift13 (11/5/22)
4. 433.02m, Tha Carter V @LilTunechi (10/13/18)
5. 431.34m, beerbongs & bentleys @PostMalone (5/12/18)— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) October 31, 2022
Midnights became Swift’s 11th No. 1 album when the Billboard 200 dated November 5 was unveiled yesterday (October 30). Her 10th studio album arrived October 21 as a 13-track LP but received seven more tracks with its literally titled Midnights (3am Edition) hours later. Billboard‘s Luminate data source counted 1.578 equivalent first-week album units for Midnights, the most by any album in the US since Adele’s 25 in 2015. It eclipsed 2014’s 1989 (1.287 million) as Swift’s biggest first-week in her career.
Swift joined The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last Monday (October 24). Fallon rang off all the Midnights benchmarks achieved in the days since its October 21 release, including breaking Spotify’s single-day streaming record, and Swift grinned like a Cheshire cat when Fallon joked she could “plug her ears” while he continued to flatter her.
“No, I like it too much,” Swift said with a laugh. She added, “I’m beside myself, really. It’s a concept record, but it’s my first directly autobiographical record in a while because the last album that I put out was a re-record of my album Red, so that has some space. I wrote that stuff a decade ago. Folklore and Evermore, it was like story time. It was like mythology. Like, ‘I’m creating a character. They went and did this and felt this way.’ So, I’m feeling very overwhelmed by the fans’ love for the record. I’m also feeling very soft and fragile. The two can exist at once. But the fact that the fans have done this — like, the breaking of the records and the going out to the stores and getting it. It’s like, you know, I’m 32. So, we’re considered geriatric pop stars. They start trying to put us out to pasture at age 25. I’m just happy to be here.”
