It’s Taylor’s world, we’re all just living in it. Taylor Swift’s brand-new record The Tortured Poets Department is on its way to Number 1 this week, and is already 2024’s fastest-selling album so far, according to Official Charts Company data.
With 197,000 chart units already in the bag, the album is on track to become Taylor’s 12th UK Number 1 album, while three of its tracks – Fortnight ft. Post Malone, title track The Tortured Poets Department and So Long, London eye a Top 3 takeover on this week’s Official Singles Chart too.
Can The Tortured Poets Department earn Taylor her biggest opening week in the UK so far? 2022’s Midnights is the record to beat, having managed nearly 205,000 UK chart units in its first seven days on sale.
Pearl Jam’s brand-new 12th studio album Dark Matter, which saw an exclusive Record Store Day UK 2024 black and yellow vinyl variant alongside its regular release, looks set to become the band’s highest-charting album in 11 years at Number 2.
Birmingham-born outfit UB40’s new career-spanning compilation UB45, which received a vinyl release exclusive to RSD UK, looks to debut at Number 3. Meanwhile, Blur’s generation-defining, former Number 1 Parklife (5) could re-enter the Top 5 for the first time in 29 years at Number 5. Parklife was reissued on 30th anniversary zoetrope vinyl exclusively for this year’s RSD event.
Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon is set to re-enter the chart (6) following a new 50th anniversary collector's edition release, with crystal clear vinyl featuring a UV artwork print.
Other Record Store Day releases come courtesy of Orbital’s eponymous debut album reissued in a new 2LP variant (7), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (9) which enjoys a new picture disc exclusive, and The 1975’s Live From Gorilla, celebrating 10 years of debut album The 1975 (10).
Further down, more RSD releases set to impact the chart this week include David Bowie’s Waiting In The Sky (Before the Starman Came to Earth) (13), Noah Kahan’s second album I Was/I Am which could make its UK chart debut (30), Black Sabbath’s Paranoid (32), Hozier’s Wasteland, Baby! (35) and a new edition of Maisie Peters’ former Number 1 LP, The Good Witch (37).
Outside of Record Store Day, Bruce Springsteen’s Best Of Bruce Springsteen could become The Boss’s 37th Top 40 album (11), as Essex duo When Rivers Meet are predicted to gain their second Top 40 record with Breakers of Chains Tour Live (16).
Amy Winehouse’s final studio album Back To Black could return to the UK Top 20 for the first time in 3 years (18) as the biopic of the same name topped the British box office last week.
And finally, Surrey singer-songwriter Lucy Rose’s fifth album This Ain’t The Way You Go Out is pacing to debut at Number 24, set to become her highest-charting record in nearly 10 years.
