It’s official: Taylor Swift’s “1989” debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with the largest sales week for an album since 2002. “1989” sold 1.287 million copies in the week ending on Nov. 2, according to Nielsen SoundScan. “1989” is Swift’s fifth studio album and was released on Oct. 27 through Big Machine Records. It’s her fourth No. 1 album, following “Red” (in 2012), “Speak Now” (2010) and “Fearless” (2008). Here are some of the achievements Swift has earned with the debut of “1989”:
The largest sales week for an album since June 2, 2002, when Eminem’s “The Eminem Show” sold 1.322 million in its second chart week at No. 1. The album debuted atop the chart a week earlier, selling 285,000 copies after it was released on a Friday, giving the album only three days of sales in its chart bow. “1989” is immediately the biggest-selling album released in 2014, and the only one to sell a million in total after only a week on sale. It jumps ahead of Coldplay’s “Ghost Stories,” which has sold 745,000. Incredibly, after just one week on sale, “1989” is the second-largest-selling album of 2014, behind only the “Frozen” soundtrack. The latter has sold 3.2 million this year. (It was released in November 2013 and has sold 3.5 million cumulatively.) “1989” and “Frozen” are the only two albums to sell a million copies in 2014. “1989” is just the 19th album to sell a million copies in a week since SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991. Of the last four million-selling weeks, which have all occurred since 2010, three of them are owned by Swift.
