What records could Taylor Swift break if she continues her number one streak?

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Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department has spent its first eight weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart — a very good number that looks set to continue to grow. Given the album’s continued stellar streaming numbers, the release of variant releases as a hedge on the sales side, and the apparent lack of competing superstar releases before mid-August, it’s unlikely to leave the top spot anytime soon.

So how long can she keep this streak going? And are there any records for consecutive weeks at No. 1 that Swift wants to break before “Tortured Poets” finally makes its inevitable descent to No. 2?

diversity has taken a look at the history of the Billboard charts and identified half a dozen records that it could still break if the album stays put over the course of the summer. Some of them seem quite achievable if no major star shows up with surprise releases in the next eight weeks.

Post Malone just announced he’ll release “F-1 Trillion” on August 16, just a week before Sabrina Carpenter’s “Short n’ Sweet” on August 23. Those are the two scheduled albums most likely to end Swift’s No. 1 streak. She’s probably well aware of those dates and probably won’t take extraordinary measures to block their path, since both artists are Swift’s friends and collaborators (Malone is a guest artist on “Tortured Poets” and a Republic labelmate; Carpenter is a frequent opener on the Eras Tour). But until those dates arrive, Swift’s album still has a lot of growing to do.

Of course, Swift hasn’t discussed whether she has any plans to break any records by maintaining her winning streak at the top. It could simply be that any week at No. 1 is a good week, just as her record holder would probably think that any game that ends in a win is a triumph, regardless of winning streaks or the postseason. But releasing so many physical and digital variants in the one week she faced a serious threat in the U.S. – the week Billie Eilish’s latest album came out – left some chart watchers wondering if she was not just going to have many intermittent weeks at No. 1, but a very long streak of consecutive weeks.

Here are six milestones Swift could reach if she keeps going like this:

If this streak reaches 11 weeks, it will break Adele’s record for most consecutive weeks at No. 1 by a female artist this century. Adele’s “21” spent ten consecutive weeks at number one from January to March 2012. “The Tortured Poets Department” only needs to stay at the top for three more weeks to top that.

If the album stays at the top for 12 weeks, Swift will break her own record for the longest-staying album at No. 1. It’s always a good feeling to beat your own record. And she doesn’t actually need multiple weeks in a row for this album. “Fearless” (the original version) and “1989” are currently Swift’s longest-running No. 1 albums, each spending 11 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200.

If the series reaches 13 weeks, it will instantly break Morgan Wallen’s record for most consecutive weeks at No. 1 this century. Wallen’s latest album, 2023’s One Thing at a Time, spent its first 12 weeks at No. 1. Swift will need to spend more weeks at the top to steal that honor from her labelmate at Republic. (It’s worth noting that Wallen’s wildly popular album returned to No. 1 after a dip, ultimately spending 19 consecutive weeks at the top of the chart.)

If this streak lasts 14 weeks, it will break the all-time record for most consecutive weeks an album spends at No. 1 from its first week – previously set by Stevie Wonder with “Songs in the Key of Life.” Say that no other album in the history debuted at number 1 and then spent several weeks there uninterrupted: that would be cause for celebration. The Wonder album is the only release to ever hit the top spot and stay there for 13 weeks, which happened in late 1976 and early 1977. “Tortured Poets” needs to stay at number 1 for another six weeks, basically until the end of July, to reach number 14 and do that. Is that doable? Right now, it looks possible.

(Billboard confirmed diversity that no album before or after Songs in the Key of Life has spent its first 13 weeks at No. 1. But seasoned chart fans will want to put this in some historical context. In the pre-SoundScan era (i.e., pre-1991), albums rarely debuted directly at No. 1. The Beatles’ blockbuster Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, for example, opened at No. 8 before reaching the top spot a week later and staying there for 15 weeks. Michael Jackson’s Thriller didn’t reach No. 1 until two months after its release… and so on. Just a footnote to keep in mind.)

If that run continues for 16 weeks, it will break the record previously set by Carole King with Tapestry for a female artist’s album to spend the most consecutive weeks at No. 1. In 1971, King’s breakthrough album spent 15 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200. (It didn’t start there; the record actually took five months to reach the top after a rather modest debut.) That has to be a big one, among records Swift could break, dating back to the beginning of the album chart.

Could Swift keep “Tortured Poets” at No. 1 for 16 weeks? The 16-week point will be reached with a chart week ending on August 8 (and announced on August 11). There would be a week between breaking that record and the release of Post Malone’s album. So barring any surprises, like a sudden surprise drop from Drake or Kanye suddenly putting together “Vultures 2,” doubling her current eight-week run doesn’t seem impossible.

If the series reaches 21 weeks, it would break Harry Belafonte’s record for most consecutive weeks at No. 1 by any artist (male or female). Just look, The that’s just not going to happen. Or is it? Swift should never be written off, but it’s hard to imagine even a hit as big as “Tortured Poets” staying at the top uninterrupted into October. But we’ll take note of that one anyway, as a (probably) impossible dream. Belafonte spent his 20 consecutive weeks at the top with “Calypso” in the late ’50s. (You probably don’t remember that, but your great-great-grandmother should.) The Belafonte album didn’t open at No. 1, however, so Stevie Wonder has the far superior record of most first weeks at the top.

Is Swift aware of all the records she could break and is she consciously striving to break them? It’s unlikely that she’s done the research necessary to keep them all in mind; she probably has less time than we do to look up all that data. But it’s hardly inconceivable that the Carole King record, for example, would have crossed her path at some point.

It’s worth noting, in hindsight, the very significant record Swift has already set, which is much more notable than any previously mentioned. This is the record for most weeks spent at No. 1 by a solo artist. To date, her albums have spent a total of 77 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 100. It seems like just yesterday she overtook Elvis Presley and topped that historic number. In fact, she broke the record barely six months ago, as 2023 turned into 2024. But with the eight weeks she’s spent at the top since then, Swift has really left Presley far behind, sitting in second place with 67 weeks. (She has long since overtaken all female competitors; next in the total count of weeks with a No. 1 album is Whitney Houston with 46.)

So she’s already set a record that will probably never be beaten in our lifetime: the longest number of weeks at No. 1 by a female solo artist. So why should she bother competing in the album charts when some of the possible benchmarks we’ve mentioned are just small stuff in comparison?

That might be because she’s got her eye on the ultimate Big Kahuna: the most weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 of any artist, period, group or solo. That record is held by the Beatles at 132 weeks—still 55 weeks ahead of Swift. But she’s catching up fast enough that if she can maintain her prolific output and penchant for capturing the public’s imagination, breaking her record seems like a potentially realistic lifetime goal. If she spent eight weeks at the top of the charts every year, she could break her record in less than a decade. But maintaining that level of production could be a challenge now that she’s approaching middle age. That’s a good reason she’s spending so many weeks at No. 1 now, when she’s at her most popular and prolific. She’s probably not focused on bragging rights with Morgan Wallen, or even Adele, Carole or Stevie. Think “Beat the Beatles” if you want to think “Endgame.”