Undoubtedly, “1989” album has been the most successful music album released by an artist in a long time. We can clearly say this by looking at all the old records it has broken so far. “1989” became the highest seller in it’s opening week, a record broken after 12 years! Taylor also became the only artist to have 3 consecutive albums with 1+ million sales in the opening week. “1989” beat Frozen soundtrack to be the highest selling album of 2014 (keep in mind that ‘Frozen’ soundtrack was released in 2013 and ‘1989’ was released in October 2014). “1989” also was the only album to sell over a million copies in the opening week in 2014. Not only album sales, Taylor’s fifth studio album was able to own music charts. “1989” also held the number one spot on Billboard Hot 200 chart for 9 non-consecutive weeks (I don’t know if it’s a record or not). So as you can see, “1989” has been a huge success for Taylor, Swifties as well as the music industry overall.
Quadruple Platinum Certified in 12 Weeks?
According to Nielsen SoundScan, “1989” album is very smoothly headed towards 4 million album sales in the United States. As of this week ‘1989’ album has sold a estimate of 3,944,000 copies in USA according to Nielsen SoundScan. Also they predict that during this week the album will sell around 80,000 copies, which would bring ‘1989’ sales to a grand total of roughly 4.02 million copies. 4+ million album sales is Quadruple Platinum certification and this is the 5th time Taylor Swift’s albums have gone Quadruple Platinum!
When ‘1989’ passes 4+ million sales mark during the next week, Taylor will be only the second artist in the history of Nielsen SoundScan (since 1991) to have continuous albums selling over 4 million copies. Another world record! The first artist to do that was the legendary Garth Brooks.
Swift’s previous studio albums all took much longer to reach 4M in U.S. sales. Her debut album, Taylor Swift, took 125 weeks to reach the plateau. Her sophomore album, Fearless, took 50 weeks. Her third and fourth albums, Speak Now and Red, each took 69 weeks. – tay-swift.net
So clearly ‘1989’ is by far the most successful album for the 25 year old Taylor Swift as well.
ALSO keep in mind that 4 million album sales is only in the USA. I have no doubt that the sales figures must be doubled or tripled to arrive at a feasible worldwide sales figure!
‘1989’ marked a huge transition in Taylor’s career. Despite all the changes, it is quite amazing and overwhelming to see such massive numbers related to this album.
Keep slaying, Taylor!