How Taylor Swift Has Stayed Atop the Charts With ‘The Tortured Poets Department’

In early June, when Taylor Swift ’s The Tortured Poets Department was enjoying its seventh week atop the Billboard 200, her friend and collaborator Lana Del Rey offered a simple explanation of Swift’s stardom to BBC News . “She’s told me so many times that she wants it more than anyone,” Del Rey said. “And how amazing — she’s getting exactly what she wants.

” This week, Swift secured her eighth consecutive week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, tying Folklore and coming behind only 1989 and Fearless (11 weeks each) for the most weeks at No. 1 of any of her 14 career chart-toppers.

TTPD is also the first album in a year, since Morgan Wallen ’s One Thing At a Time , to have spent at least two months atop the list and is the first album by a woman to spend its first eight weeks at No. 1 since Whitney Houston ‘s Whitney spent its first 11 weeks at the top in 1987. It also extends Swift’s record of weeks spent at the apex of the Billboard 200 to 77 — 10 weeks more than the artist with the second-most, Elvis Presley (67).

While Swift is adept at rolling out record-breaking albums, what’s different this time is not how she has done it but for how long — and when. While she — and most artists across genres — often boosts first-week sales with multiple vinyl variants, signed CD copies and deluxe digital exclusives, Swift has expanded on that rollout plan well beyond the initial release of The Tortured Poets Department . It’s a strategy that’s relative.