In a taped speech for the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday night, accepting the best direction prize for her gender-switch video “The Man” from her 2019 album, “Lover,” Taylor Swift took a moment to recognize her fans’ support of her latest LP.
“Everything that you guys have done with ‘Folklore’ this summer,” Swift said, stationed in a strangely featureless room, “I am just so blown away and taken aback by your generosity to me.”
What her fans have done is send “Folklore” to the top of the Billboard album chart for five consecutive weeks — the only album to have notched that accomplishment since Drake’s “Scorpion” two years ago. It’s also Swift’s first time spending so many weeks at No. 1 in a row since “Fearless,” her breakthrough second album, which came out in late 2008 and, for a stretch into 2009, had seven straight No. 1s. (In total, “Fearless” spent 11 weeks at the top.)
“Folklore,” which was released last month with less than a day’s notice, had the equivalent of 98,000 sales in the United States in its fifth week out, including 60 million streams and 52,000 copies sold as a full album. To help move hundreds of thousands of copies of “Folklore” as a complete package, Swift has offered fans dozens of merchandise bundles through her website, and lately sent autographed CDs to indie record stores around the country.
Also this week, two posthumous rap albums that have been reliable chart hits this summer hold their positions, with Pop Smoke’s “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon” at No. 2 and Juice WRLD’s “Legends Never Die” at No. 3. The Broadway cast album of “Hamilton” is No. 4.
Nas’s new album “King’s Disease” opens at No. 5, and “Imploding the Mirage,” the latest from the rock band the Killers, arrives on the chart at No. 8.
Source: Music - nytimes.com
