Taylor Swift‘s nearly six-month-old “Evermore” has returned to the top of the album chart, surprisingly — or, at least it might have been a surprise to anyone not tracking the tweets of Swifties, ecstatic that the vinyl copies they’d ordered in December were finally arriving on their doorsteps.
Album sales for Swift are being tracked as they’re shipped, not as they’re ordered, so nearly a half-year’s worth of “Folklore” LP orders stacked up all at once. But it wasn’t just vinyl driving the collection’s big numbers. Swift also timed other promotions to the belated LP release, including the first-time shipment of autographed “Evermore” CDs to independent record shops — as she’d previously done with the “Folklore” album — and also the release of a discounted digital download edition that included a fresh remix.
Altogether, “Evermore” re-conquered the Rolling Stone album chart with 239,200 album-equivalent units in its 25th week of release. That tally was mostly due to a staggering 157,400 full-album sales, the majority of those vinyl copies, in a record week for a modern-era LP release.
The week’s top debut was DMX‘s posthumous album, “Exodus,” which entered the chart at No. 8 with 29,800 album units, of which 14,400 were in full-album sales. The late rapper’s swan song accumulated 17.6 million streams for the week.
Olivia Rodrigo did unusually strong holdover numbers that would have made for a good headline in themselves, had Swift’s album not risen to command the news. In its second week, “Sour” had 185,500 album-equivalent units, a number that nearly any other artist would die to have as a first-week figure nowadays.
There were no other notable bows besides DMX’s to speak of. Blackberry Smoke’s “You Hear Georgia” came in at No. 58, Tomorrow X Together’s “The Chaos Chapter: Freeze” premiered at No 97 and country star Chase Rice’s “The Album” popped up at No. 159.
Some superstar releases that bowed last week were not holding up as well as Rodrigo’s. In their second week out, Twenty One Pilots slipped to No. 33, Nicki Minaj’s mixtape fell to No. 35, Pink’s soundtrack to her Amazon Prime film dropped toat No. 37 and Blake Shelton dipped to No. 69.
Rounding out the top 10 albums after Swift and Rodrigo were J. Cole, Morgan Wallen, MoneyBagg Yo, Dua Lipa, Juice WRLD, the aforementioned DMX, Luke Combs and Justin Bieber.
On the songs chart, the news was mostly about Rodrigo, whose “Good for U” held strong at No. 1 for its second week, with 44.9 million streams. Essentially, she was claiming 50% of the upper-ranked songs, with cuts from “Sour” accounting for five of the top 10 slots and 10 of the top 20. only one song from her 11-track album landed outside the top 20: “Hope Ur OK” bringing up the rear at No. 25.
