Taylor Swift’s ‘Midnights’ Has Most Weeks at No. 1 on Top Album Sales Chart Since ‘Frozen’
Taylor Swift’s Midnights continues its hot streak atop Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart, as the set spends its 12th consecutive, and total, week at No. 1 on the list dated Jan. 21. The album sold 25,000 copies in the U.S. in the week ending Jan. 12 (down 58%) according to Luminate.
Midnights now has the most weeks at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart since the Frozen soundtrack ruled for 13 nonconsecutive weeks in 2014. Midnights has the most weeks in a row at No. 1 since the Titanic soundtrack logged all 16 of its No. 1 weeks consecutively in 1998.
Midnights’ total U.S. album sales now stand at 1.140 million.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
BTS’ Love Yourself: Her re-enters Top Album Sales at No. 2 following the set’s Jan. 6 release on vinyl. The effort, initially released in 2017, bounds back onto the chart with 20,000 sold (up 2,130%), with most of that sum from vinyl sales (18,000). It’s the first time BTS has released an album on vinyl in the U.S., though the group has issued singles on vinyl.
Love Yourself: Her also debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Vinyl Albums chart, the first time a K-pop title has led list. It also halts Swift’s stranglehold of the top spot with Midnights, pushing the album down to No. 2 after 11 straight weeks at No. 1.
Back on Top Album Sales, ATEEZ’s Spin Off: From the Witness falls one spot to No. 3 (14,000; down 66%) while French Montana’s Coke Boys 6: Gangsta Grillz, hosted by DJ Drama, debuts at No. 4 (11,000).
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours dips 4-5 (just over 7,000; down 17%), RM’s Indigo descends 3-6 (7,000; down 22%) and Michael Jackson’s Thriller falls 6-7 (nearly 7,000; down 16%). Stray Kids’ former No. 1 MAXIDENT re-enters the chart at No. 8 with nearly 6,000 sold (up 378%) after a new Target-exclusive CD edition of the album was released on Jan. 6.
Rounding out the top 10 are two former No. 1s: Harry Styles’ Harry’s House (5-9 with nearly 6,000; down 32%) and Tyler, the Creator’s Igor (7-10 with 5,000; down 23%).
In the week ending Jan. 12, there were 1.837 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 13.5% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.512 million (down 14.7%) and digital albums comprised 325,000 (down 7.5%).
There were 589,000 CD albums sold in the week ending Jan. 12 (down 13.6% week-over-week) and 915,000 vinyl albums sold (down 15.4%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 1.27 (up 3.4% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 1.996 million (up 33.2%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 3.961 million (up 11.8% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 3.285 million (up 19.8%) and digital album sales total 676,000 (down 15.4%).
Keith Caulfield
Billboard