Taylor Swift's Blockbuster Turns One: A Look Back At The History It Made

Forbes

27-04-2025

One year ago this week, Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department made history when it debuted on ... More the Billboard 200, breaking all kinds of records. AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - JULY 05: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY AND NO COMMERCIAL USE AT ANY TIME. NO USE ON PUBLICATION COVERS.) Taylor Swift performs onstage during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Johan Cruijff Arena on July 05, 2024 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. (Photo byfor TAS Rights Management)
Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department debuted on the Billboard charts one year ago this week — and what a debut it was. The full-length arrived with record-breaking numbers across virtually every metric the company tracks, from pure sales to streaming totals to total vinyl dominance. Now, 52 weeks later, the set is still found on two tallies: the Billboard 200, where it sits at No. 16, and the Top Streaming Albums chart, where it lifts slightly and settles at No. 13, after previously conquering both rosters.
In honor of its one-year anniversary on the Billboard rankings, here's a look back at The Tortured Poets Department's blockbuster first week — one that helped redefine what a commercial music launch could look like in the modern era.
In its first frame, The Tortured Poets Department opened with 2.61 million equivalent album units in America alone. That stands out as the second-largest debut in the history of the Billboard 200. The only album to ever start with a more impressive sum was Adele's 25, which bowed with 3.48 million back in 2015.
That massive figure includes all forms of consumption — sales, streams, and track equivalents (fans buying some songs from the project, but not all of them, which are compiled together to create album 'units'). In an era when album launches rarely top 500,000 units, Swift's opening sum was nearly unheard of.
Out of that 2.61 million total, a staggering 1.914 million were pure purchases, either digital or physical. That's the third-largest sales week since Luminate began tracking purchases carefully and more directly in 1991. The Tortured Poets Department trails behind only 25 (2.433 million) and NSYNC's No Strings Attached (2.4 million). For context, the majority of chart-topping albums today don't even reach six figures in sales.
Of those traditional sales, 859,000 were vinyl copies. That number allowed Swift to break her own record for the biggest vinyl sales week in the modern era. That record previously belonged to 1989 (Taylor's Version), which had moved 693,000 copies on wax just a few months prior. Swift holds most of the biggest vinyl sales weeks ever in America.
Beyond physical and digital sales, The Tortured Poets Department was also hugely successful on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. The project pulled in 891.34 million on-demand audio streams in its debut seven-day tracking week, breaking the all-time record for the largest U.S. streaming period for an album. The previous record-holder, Drake's Scorpion, had opened with 745.92 million back in 2018. Shockingly, Swift beat that sum by more than 140 million streams. The title's lengthy tracklist – the first edition featured 16 songs, while the Anthology version includes a total of 31 – surely played a role in its ability to shatter this record.
The collection's debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 – which was not surprising to anybody – gave Swift her fourteenth chart-topper. As it arrived and she hit that number, she matched with Jay-Z for the most among solo artists. Only The Beatles, with 19, claimed more.
Since then, Drake has also secured a fourteenth leader, as his collaborative project Some Sexy Songs 4 U with PartyNextDoor opened in first place in 2025.