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Taylor Swift marks a new milestone in her career in the United Kingdom. The Department of Tortured Poets takes a considerable lead in the race for the national charts.
In just three days of follow-up, Tortured poets (via EMI) scores a career-best UK opening week for Swift with over 220,000 units combined, according to a rare sales flash released by Official Charts Company.
This is well ahead of Swift’s previous best for the first week, as Midnightswhich accumulated 204,000 combined units in seven days following its 2022 release.
Tortured poets has a long way to go if it wants to compete with the UK’s all-time fastest sellers.
The record holder is Adele’s 2015 effort 25, with 800,000 first week units; before the release of Oasis in 1997 Be here now, with 696,000 units (collected in just three days of sales); and Ed Sheeran’s 2017 album ÷ with 670,000 units respectively.
As previously reported, Swift is expected to hit a double in the UK charts. Tortured poets is already the UK’s best-selling album of 2024 so far, and Swift is expected to land the top three spots on the national singles chart, with “Fortnight” featuring Post Malone, “The Tortured Poets Department” and “So Long, London,” respectively.
“Fortnight” is set to become TayTay’s fourth UK No. 1, following “Look What You Made Me Do” (2017), “Cardigan” (2020) and “Is It Over Now?” (Taylor Version)” (2023).
And with Tortured poets, Swift is set to score a 12th No. 1 album in the UK, tying Madonna at the top of the female solo artist chart. She is also the first and only artist this century to have accumulated 10 No. 1 albums in the UK.
Swift’s 11th studio album has already set numerous records, including a new world streaming record on Spotify, with more than 300 million streams in a single day and 700,000 copies on vinyl in its first week on sale in the United States -United. States.
All will be revealed when the Official UK Albums Chart is released on Friday April 26.