Beth Garrabrant
Taylor Swift’s third re-recorded album, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), spends a second week at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart (as of July 29). It’s the first time a newly recorded Swift album has spent its first two weeks at #1. The pop superstar’s re-recorded tracks “Fearless” and “Red” each made it to No. 1 in 2021, then fell off the top spot in the second frame – although the former returned to No. 1 six months later after releasing it on vinyl and a signed CD.
According to Luminate, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) racked up 121,000 album equivalent units (down 83%) in the US for the week ended July 20.
Swift leads a quiet top 10 with the region holding no debuts for the first time in six months. The January 28 list saw no debuts in the top 10 as of late, when SZA’s “SOS” topped the charts for a sixth time.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the week’s most popular albums in the United States based on multi-metric consumption measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. The units include album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equates to one album sale, or 10 tracks sold on an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription-based on-demand audio and video streams generated from songs on an album. The new chart, dated July 29, 2023, will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on Tuesday (July 25). For all chart updates, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on Twitter and Instagram.
Of the 121,000 equivalent album units of Speak Now (Taylor’s version) achieved in the week ended July 20, 73,000 were SEA units (down 65%, representing 95.6 million official on-demand streams of the 22 songs in the set), 47,000 were album sales (down 91%) and 1,000 were TEA units (down 72%).
For the second straight year, Swift has four albums in the top 10 on the Billboard 200. A week ago, she became the first living artist to have four albums in the top 10 simultaneously since 1966. In the most recent chart, the same four albums (all former No. 1s) are still in the top 10, as Speak Now (Taylor’s version) is joined by Midnights (5-4 with 51,000 units; down 7%), Lover (7-6 with 44,000; down 2%) and Folklore (a non-mover at No. 10 with 34,000; up 5%).
Morgan Wallen’s former #1 “One Thing at a Time” ranked #2 on the Billboard 200 with 105,000 album equivalents (up 2%). “One Thing at a Time” has charted over 100,000 album equivalents in all 20 weeks of charting. It extends its own record as the album with the most weeks to exceed 100,000 units since the Billboard 200 began ranking tracks by unit in December 2014.
Peso Pluma’s “Génesis” peaks with a 4-3 rise (55,000 equivalent album units; down 5%); Wallen’s chart-topping Dangerous: The Double Album climbs 6-5 (48,000; up 3%); SZA’s SOS up 8-7 (43,000; down 1%); Pink Tape, former leader of Lil Uzi Vert, loses 3-8 (40,000; down 34%); and Gunna’s A Gift & a Curse is stable at number 9 (nearly 40,000; down 6%).
Luminate, the independent data provider for the Billboard charts, conducts a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate verifies and authenticates data. Working with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed based on specified criteria before final chart calculations are performed and published.