In about a month and a half, Taylor Swift will release her next album, 1989 (Taylor version). The re-recorded edition of her pop blockbuster is already one of the most anticipated releases of 2023, and when it arrives, it’s bound to launch with a huge debut. But how big will that number be for the first week? Can Swift manage a million units with a re-recorded album?
1989 (Taylor version) will be the fourth album that Swift has re-recorded and re-released as part of a project that aims to give her some control over her first six albums. His first three albums all reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, and they’re getting bigger and bigger with each new release. Every subsequent title it releases sits at the top of the chart with a bigger first week of sales than its predecessor, and there’s no reason to believe that 1989 (Taylor version) won’t be the biggest yet.
Swift’s biggest re-recorded debut album so far belongs to her most recent, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version). This set began its journey at the top of the Billboard 200 with 716,000 equivalent units. That’s a huge starting sum for any title, let alone a re-recorded effort. But it’s also a far cry from the performance of the original.
When Swift released the original Speak Now in 2010, it immediately reached first place on the Billboard 200 thanks to 1,047,000 copies sold. The re-recorded version came in the same position with just under 70% of the first week’s total of the first edition.
1989 reached number one on the Billboard 200 in November 2014 with 1.287 million copies sold. If 1989 (Taylor version) manages the same type of performance as Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), it will quickly become its biggest re-recording to date, opening with approximately 875,000 equivalent units. Of course, this is just a rough estimate based on past performances of his previous re-recordings, but that’s not necessarily how things will turn out.
1989 earned Swift her biggest Billboard 200 debut of her career, at least until her 2022 title Midnights reached number 1 with over 1.5 million copies sold in its first week. Affection for the set, which produced a trio of Hot 100 No. 1 smashes, remains incredibly high. In fact, in many ways, 1989 is Swift’s most successful album to date, and so the anticipation for its re-recording is incredibly high, perhaps more so than for her others.
Depending on how Swift promotes 1989 (Taylor version) and whatever sales she continues to deliver on special edition vinyl copies and more, there’s a chance the re-recorded album will debut with a million offset equivalent units, although that’s far from guaranteed. Swift will have to do everything possible to reach this sum, which seems to be within its reach, but it may be exaggerated.
It seems certain that 1989 (Taylor version) will hit No. 1 when it arrives, and a starting sum of at least three-quarters of a million units seems likely. We won’t know until November if the ensemble will actually achieve this milestone, which is out of reach for almost every other artist in the industry. 1989 (Taylor version) will be published.
