Taylor Swift equals Madonna’s record of 12 UK No 1 albums.

Taylor Swift has tied with Madonna to become the female artist with the most UK No 1 albums, earning her twelfth chart-topper with the global phenomenon that is The Tortured Poets Department.

Swift also dominates this week’s singles chart, with three songs in the Top Five including a No 1 for Fortnight, featuring Post Malone. It’s her fourth No 1 single, and her third chart double.

With 207,000 chart sales, a figure combined from streams and purchases, The Tortured Poets Department outsold the rest of the Top 10 combined and has the UK’s biggest opening week of sales in seven years, since Ed Sheeran’s ÷ in 2017.

Bruce Springsteen also has 12 No 1s, while the only artists with more are the Beatles (16), the Rolling Stones (14), Robbie Williams (14) and Elvis Presley (13).

No artist has got to 12 No 1s as swiftly as Swift, though – she did it in 11 years and six months, considerably quicker than the Beatles, who needed to wait until 1977’s The Beatles at Hollywood Bowl to get their 12th. Eight of those No 1s have been since 2020, partly thanks to her project to re-record her albums from an ill-fated deal with former label Big Machine.


It became the most streamed album in a single day on Spotify, then the fastest album to reach a billion streams on the platform. Twenty-two of the 50 most streamed songs globally on Thursday were by Swift.

After three days on sale, Swift had sold 700,000 vinyl copies of The Tortured Poets Department in the US, breaking the weekly record (since records began in 1991). That number is particularly remarkable considering that around a million vinyl albums were sold in total in the US in 2023, with nearly 10% of those sold by Swift (chiefly her album Midnights).

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