On Friday at midnight, music superstar Taylor Swift will release her eleventh studio album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department.’ The release comes as the popstar continues her global Eras tour, with the Europe leg set to begin early next month.
Swift’s career in the music industry spans nearly two decades. In 2006, she released her first album, Taylor Swift, which contained hits such as ‘Tear Drops on My Guitar’ and ‘Our Song,’ marking her quest for stardom. She has won over 500 music awards and continues to break records with her sales and streaming numbers.
With ten new studio albums, four re-recorded studio albums, five extended plays, and four live albums, it’s difficult for the pop star to pick just one as her favorite. Swift has sold an estimated 114 million album units worldwide, which begs the question: Which album is the pop star’s most successful?
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‘1989′
Swift’s 2014 album, 1989′, stands out as the artist’s best-selling album. In total, the album has sold over 14,332,116 copies worldwide.
With classic hits like ‘Style,’ ‘Blank Space,’ and ‘Bad Blood’ this album dominated the charts in the year of its release.
Her fifth studio album, 1989′, marked a significant milestone in Swift’s career. With it, she defined herself as a pop artist and moved away from her country music singer roots.
At the time of its release, record sales for artists were generally low due to the emergence of digital download and streaming platforms, which makes Swift’s record sales even more impressive.
‘1989′ allowed Swift to become the first artist to have three albums sell one million copies within the first week, a record she beat with later albums.
‘Fearless’
Close behind ‘1989′ is Swift’s 2008 album, ‘Fearless,’ which ended up selling 11,901,000 units worldwide. In the U.S. alone, the album sold 7,210,000 copies as of October 2020.
‘Fearless’ has been consistently charting on either the US Top Country Albums chart or US Billboard 200 chart for over a decade since its initial release. Swift, who was only 20 at the time, was honored at the Grammy Awards for being “one of the most important singer-songwriters of her generation.”
After its initial release, Taylor Swift re-recorded her album and added some previously unreleased tracks. The re-recording was released in 2021 and was an instant hit, selling 291,000 units in the first week. The sales were a combination of both album sales and streaming.‘Midnights’
Although her latest release ‘Midnights’ isn’t her best-selling album, it could break Swift’s own sales record. ‘Midnights’ broke a new record by selling six million album-equivalent units in its first eight weeks and continues to benefit from sales and streams as the ‘Eras Tour’ sets to head to Central and South America.
