Taylor Swift ties Whitney Houston’s all-time record

Taylor Swift’s surprise new studio album Folklore continues its domination of the Billboard 200 charts, by remaining number one for a sixth straight week.

The album earned 90,000 equivalent album units in the past week ending September 3, and has now spent the most weeks at No. 1 since Drakes’s album Views stayed there for 13 nonconsecutive weeks in 2016. With her most recent success, Swift tied Whitney Houston’s record of 46 cumulative weeks at No. 1, which is the most among female artists in history. 

Swift and Houston’s all-time record is 12 more than the next female musical artist, Adele, who has had 34 weeks at No. 1. The Beatles command the overall record at 132 weeks during their legendary careers.

The Beatles and Swift are now the only two acts to have at least five albums each with six weeks at No. 1, according to Billboard.  

Swift is also the first female artist to have seven albums debut in the No. 1 spot. Folklore, which has received widespread critical acclaim, has now spent the most weeks on the top of the charts in 2020. The album sold more than two million copies globally in its first week, 1.3 million of which were sold on its first day alone. She also broke the record for first-day album streams by a female artist on Spotify with over 80.6 million streams.

So far three singles -- Cardigan, Exile, and Betty -- have been released since the record dropped on July 24. It turns out the prolific singer-songwriter’s record label Republic Records didn’t even know about it until right before it was released. 

Swift recently released a deluxe version of the album featuring the bonus track The Lakes.  Written and recorded while in isolation due to COVID-19, Swift collaborated on 11 of the 16 new songs on the hit album with multi-instrumentalist Aaron Dessner of the indie rock band The National. (DM)        

Queen bees: With the success of Folklore, Swift tied Whitney Houston's record of 46 cumulative weeks at No. 1, which is the most among female artists in history.