19 November 2021
Newsdesk
Red (Taylor’s Version) rules over the Official Albums Chart this week, securing Taylor Swift her eighth consecutive Number 1 album.
With 72,000 chart sales, Red (Taylor’s Version) finishes ahead of two massive recent chart-toppers, ABBA’s Voyage (2) and Ed Sheeran’s Equals (3), overtaking Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour to claim the biggest week for a female artist this year.
Taylor’s opening week figure surpasses the first week sales of the original Red album, which debuted at Number 1 in November 2012 with 62,000 sales. View Taylor’s Official UK Chart history in full here.
Notching up almost 57,000 physical and digital sales, Red (Taylor’s Version) is also the fastest-selling (physical and downloads) female solo artist album of 2021 so far, overtaking Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over The Country Club.
Taylor’s latest chart-topper marks her fifth Number 1 album in less than three years, following Lover (August 2019), Folklore (August 2020), Evermore (December 2020) and Fearless (Taylor’s Version) (April 2021). Earlier this year, Taylor set a UK chart record when Fearless (Taylor’s Version) became her third chart-topping collection in less than 12 months.
Taylor Swift now matches Kylie Minogue for solo artists with eight Official UK Number 1 albums - the only female artist to have more is Madonna with 12. Taylor is also the first and only female artist to have eight UK Number 1 albums this century.
Meanwhile, Little Mix finish at Number 4 with their new greatest hits collection Between Us, becoming their seventh Top 5 album, and Rod Stewart’s The Tears Of Hercules lands at Number 5 to become Sir Rod’s 37th Top 10 in the UK.
Idles score their third Top 10 album with Crawler (6), this week’s best-seller on vinyl, followed closely by Damon Albarn’s The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows (7) and The Wanted’s Most Wanted: The Greatest Hits (8).
An Evening With by Silk Sonic – AKA Bruno Mars & Anderson .Paak – is at Number 9, while Disco by Kylie Minogue returns to the chart at Number 10 thanks to a special Guest List edition of the album.
Outside the Top 10, South Yorkshire indie group The Reytons are at Number 11 with their debut album Kids Off The Estate.
ABBA’s record-breaking Gold: Greatest Hits album lands at Number 14 this week, as it reaches a landmark BRIT Certified 20x Platinum in the UK. With over six million chart sales to date, Gold has added to its accolades which include being the first album to reach over 1,000 weeks on the Official Albums Chart Top 100, and the second-best selling album of all time in the UK.
At Number 15, Ronan Keating earns his 11th solo Top 20 album with Songs From Home, while Nirvana’s classic Nevermind album rockets 70 places to Number 18 following a 30th anniversary reissue.
Further down, Australian singer Courtney Barnett’s third album Things Take Time, Take Time debuts at Number 31, and finally, How To Steal The World by Red Rum Club debuts at Number 34.
