Swift’s ‘Reputation’ sales soar, but Adele keeps crown
LOS ANGELES: Taylor Swift’s new album “Reputation” has sold more than one million copies in its fi rst four days, Nielsen Music said on Tuesday, but the US pop star failed to beat the record set by Britain’s Adele two years ago.
Swift’s 1.05 million US sales of “Reputation” came despite the singer keeping the album from streaming services and gave her the best- selling album of 2017.
But the fi gure was less than half the monster sales for the debut of Adele’s “25” album, which surpassed 2.43 million copies in the fi rst four days of release in November 2015 and smashed a 15-year- old US record set by boy band NSync in 2000. Adele also initially kept “25” from streaming services.
Swift, 27, recording on Nashville- based independent label Big Machine Records, now has four albums that have sold more than one million copies in their fi rst week — “1989,” “Red,” and “Speak Now.”
“Reputation,” her fi rst studio album in three years, marked another transformation for Swift with songs marked by vengeance that take aim at the media and some of her haters.
Full fi rst week sales will be available next week, when “Reputation” will top the Billboard 200 album chart.
Swift this week announced the fi rst US dates of what is expected to be a world tour to promote the album.
Meanwhile, Sam Smith’s “The Thrill of it All” scored the British singer’s fi rst No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 album chart, edging out new releases by Maroon 5 and Blake Shelton, according to data from Nielsen SoundScan on Monday,
Swift’s latest single, “Call It What You Want,” led the digital songs chart, which measures online singles sales, with some 67,000 units sold.
Swift’s “Reputation” album sold more than 717,000 copies on Friday, its fi rst day of release, according to BuzzAngle Music data, and is expected to debut at the top of the Billboard 200 chart next week.
Smith’s “The Thrill of it All” sold more than 237,000 units in its fi rst week to debut as No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Billboard said it was Smith’s best sales week ever in the United States.
The Billboard 200 chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).
Maroon 5’s “Red Pill Blues” album took the No. 2 spot with sales of some 122,000 units for the week, while country singer Shelton’s “Texoma Shore” debuted in fourth place.
The new releases sent last week’s chart topper, country star Kenny Chesney’s “Live in No Shoes Nation,” down to sixth place.
Rapper Chris Brown’s “Heartbreak on a Full Moon” retained its No. 3 spot, while “Without Warning,” the collaboration between rappers 21 Savages, Offset and producer Metro Boomin, slipped one place to No. 5.— Reuters