Taylor Swift‘s “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” has put her back at the top of the album charts — for the third time in a little over eight months.
The re-recorded version of her second album — which became her first No. 1 record back in 2008 — debuted at No. 1 this week on Billboard’s Top 200, Top Album Sales and Country Albums charts. “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” also nabbed the top spot on charts in the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.
“Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” marks Swift’s ninth No. 1 album, and has set all kinds of records in the music world. The album is the only re-recorded album to ever reach the top spot, and has made Swift the first woman to have three No. 1 albums in less than a year, according to Billboard. The past year has been nothing if not bountiful for Swift, who released “Folklore” in July 2020, its follow-up, “Evermore,” in December 2020 and “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” on April 9.
With a total of 291,000 album units in the U.S., according to Billboard, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” earns Swift the biggest first week for any album in 2021 and the biggest week for a country album since 2015. That album-unit figure combines data from sales and streaming. The previous leader for the year was Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: the Double Album,” which came out of the box with 265,000 album units in January.
When it comes to pure sales, Swift is even more of a queen. Full-album sales added up to 179,000 copies sold, giving her easily the biggest one-week album sales total of 2021. On-demand streams for the album stood at 143 million for the week, comprising 109,000 streaming-equivalent albums that were added to her overall album unit total, per Billboard.
With over 50 million Spotify streams in its first day of release, the album also had the biggest first day debut for an album on the streaming platform in 2021.
“Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” is part of the singer’s mission to re-record the six albums at the center of a dispute regarding her masters, which were obtained by Scooter Braun in 2019 as part of his acquisition of Swift’s old label, Big Machine Records. Braun has since sold the masters to an investment fund. In addition to re-recordings of the album’s original 13 songs, “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)” also contains re-recordings of the six bonus songs on the platinum edition of “Fearless,” the 2010 single “If Today Was a Fairytale” and six “from the vault” songs that were never before released.
