Taylor Swift‘s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 this week.
The re-recording of the Lavender Haze singer’s – who is set to resume her blockbuster Eras tour in South America on November 9 – 2014 album sold 1.653 million albums making it the biggest debut of her record-shattering career.
The album dropped on October 27 and is the Anti-Hero singer’s 13th to hit number one on the Billboard chart.
This week’s album sales broke the record she’d previously set with the release of the original version of the album in 2014, at 1.287 million.
1989 (Taylor’s Version) also marks the biggest debut of any album, based on unit sales, since Adele‘s 25 in 2015, Billboard reported.
All 13 of the Bad Blood singer’s full-length studio albums and re-recorded projects, starting with 2008’s Fearless, which was her second studio album, through 2023’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) have debuted at number one.
When the Karma hitmaker dropped the re-recorded album last week, she wrote on Instagram, ‘I was born in 1989, reinvented for the first time in 2014, and a part of me was reclaimed in 2023 with the re-release of this album I love so dearly.
‘Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the magic you would sprinkle on my life for so long.’
She continued, ‘This moment is a reflection of the woods we’ve wandered through and all this love between us still glowing in the darkest dark.
‘I present to you, with gratitude and wild wonder, my version of 1989. It’s been waiting for you. Taylor.’
Basically, as she sings on the song Mastermind from her 2022 album Midnights, ‘It was all by design. Cause I’m a mastermind.’
And the Shake It Off singer, 33, is truly a mastermind as she came up with the idea to re-record her albums after Scooter Braun purchased her masters from Scott Borchetta’s music label Big Machine, where she spent the first decade plus of her career, in 2019.
At the time, Taylor made her displeasure clear writing a lengthy post about it on Tumblr.
‘For years I asked, pleaded for a chance to own my work. Instead I was given an opportunity to sign back up to Big Machine Records and ‘earn’ one album back at a time, one for every new one I turned in,’ she wrote.
‘I walked away because I knew once I signed that contract, Scott Borchetta would sell the label, thereby selling me and my future. I had to make the excruciating choice to leave behind my past.
She continued: ‘Music I wrote on my bedroom floor and videos I dreamed up and paid for from the money I earned playing in bars, then clubs, then arenas, then stadiums.’
She ended the post, ‘Sad and grossed out, [broken heart emoji] Taylor.’
So she decided to re-record her version of her first six albums and what that has resulted in is the original albums being ignored in favor of the Taylor’s Version albums which all include several previously unreleased songs ‘From the Vault.’
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Swift also set a record for the most-streamed artist in a single day in the history of Spotify on October 27 and 1989 (Taylor’s Version) was the most-streamed album on a single day.
1989 (Taylor’s Version) has more songs ‘From the Vault’ than any of her other re-releases prompting her to write:
‘To be perfectly honest, this is my most FAVORITE re-record I’ve ever done because the 5 From the Vault tracks are so insane. I can’t believe they were ever left behind. But not for long!’
She added, ‘The 1989 album changed my life in countless ways.’
