Taylor Swift defends herself against Zach Bryan and breaks or reaches chart records

Taylor Swift’s winning streak at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with The Tortured Poets Department continues unabated, as the album fended off a strong challenge from a new release from Zach Bryan to spend its 12th consecutive week at the top of that chart, breaking or tying several records in the process.

With the recent No. 1 finish for “Tortured Poets,” Swift’s album broke the record previously set by Whitney Houston for most consecutive weeks at No. 1 by a female artist with “Whitney.” Houston’s 1987 album spent its first 11 weeks at the top of the chart before falling off.

As for more contemporary metrics, “Tortured Poets” is now tied with Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” on the list of songs that have spent the most consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 this century. (In total, Wallen’s latest blockbuster album spent a whopping 19 weeks at No. 1 in late 2023 and early 2024, but only the first 12 of those were consecutive.)

Bryan’s album seemed to have a chance to dethrone Swift’s, but “The Great American Bar Scene,” which reached 137,000 album-equivalent units, failed to match Swift’s album’s 163,000 comparable units in its 12th week, according to Luminate data released by Billboard.

With the winning streak Swift is currently on, she has a chance to make or break a record almost every week her album stays at No. 1. (1 month ago diversity (In this story, I broke down some of the various records she could break.) As mentioned, if she lasts one more week, which would be her lucky 13th, she’ll beat Wallen’s record for most consecutive weeks this century. And if “Poets” keeps going one more week after that and gets to 14, she’ll break the all-time record for the first consecutive weeks at No. 1, breaking an old Stevie Wonder record from the ’70s.

Can she continue her winning streak next week and beyond? That will likely depend on the strength of Eminem’s “The Death of Slim Shady,” which came out Friday — more on that in a moment.

Although he probably didn’t intend to, Zach Bryan may have done Swift a favor by patriotically releasing his album on July 4, a Thursday, the day before a new chart period begins. So “The Great American Bar Scene” actually landed at a modest 17th on the charts last week based on the 32,000 units it achieved on that one chart day, a decent start that didn’t count toward this latest chart placement. But it’s not certain that Bryan would have beaten Swift’s mark had he released his record on a Friday.

Bryan was also limited in terms of competition by the fact that no physical copies of his album were yet on the market. The CD and vinyl editions of “Great American Bar Scene” will be months away and will not be released until October 11. The singer was clearly more concerned with getting his album out on time than waiting for a major simultaneous release.

Swift, meanwhile, benefited from releasing even more limited versions of her album, as usual. According to Luminate results released by Billboard on Sunday, weekly sales of the entire album, “Tortured Poets,” rose from 35,000 the previous week to 90,000 this week, a remarkable increase of 154%.

The list of various limited edition versions of the album that contributed to the 90,000 copies sold is long. On Thursday, Swift released three digital versions within a matter of hours, each containing a separate live acoustic track from Stockholm as a bonus in addition to the standard version’s tracklist, for $4.99 each. These didn’t add much to her sales figure, but digital download sales of the album rose to 19,000 copies sold, a 1,266% increase. The bigger factor in her total was a 127% increase in CD sales to 67,000 CDs sold, as seven previous CD variants were briefly restocked on her webstore for a few hours last Sunday (including a signed copy).

Swift’s streaming numbers also benefited from the release of two remixes of the album’s first single, “Fortnight,” which features Post Malone, on digital outlets. Despite the release of these two tracks, her streaming total dropped slightly by 7% compared to the previous week, though it still stands at a gigantic 94.83 million on-demand streams for the album, according to Billboard.

Bryan was able to secure at least one significant No. 1 hit, easily unseating Swift at the top of Billboard’s streaming album chart, recording a remarkable 163.87 million on-demand streams of the 19 songs on “Great American Bar Scene.”

Another achievement for Bryan: He currently has two albums in the top 10. The second is last year’s self-titled “Zach Bryan,” which rose from No. 12 to No. 10. (It’s the second time he’s had two albums in the top 10 at the same time.)

With Swift and Bryan at Nos. 1 and 2 atop the Billboard 200, Wallen’s still-strong “One Day at a Time” moved to No. 3 with 69,000 album sales in the week. And like Bryan, he has two albums in the top 10, the second being “Dangerous: The Double Album” at No. 6.

Albums by Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan maintained their previous weekly positions at No. 4 and 5, respectively. Rounding out the top 10 were albums by Noah Kahan, Shaboozey and Megan Thee Stallion (whose “Megan” slipped from No. 2 to No. 9 in its second week).

How likely is it that Swift will break more records and extend her consecutive weeks at No. 1 to 13, 14, or even more weeks?

Eminem’s Death of Slim Shady is the biggest immediate obstacle in that path and a big question mark. His previous album, 2020’s Music to Be Murdered By, had 279,000 copies sold — and if he can do that again, it’s hard to see how Swift could increase her weekly total and top that, even if she releases a whole bunch of new variants. However, it’s highly unlikely that the new Eminem album will sell anywhere near as many copies as the previous one… if only because he hasn’t released any physical editions that could boost his numbers. When Music to Be Murdered By had that great first week, a large portion of that total — 117,000 copies — came via traditional album sales, which won’t be as strong since only digital albums are being sold right now.

Interest in The Death of Slim Shady was high, if perhaps a little more scattered, as Music to Be Murdered By was a surprise release with little lead time, while Death received a more traditional, longer release, with the single “Houdini” arriving six weeks before the album. On Sunday, “Houdini” was Eminem’s highest-charting song on Spotify’s daily US Top 50 at No. 10, followed by seven tracks in the teens on the chart.