As Taylor Swift achieves her 12th No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart (dated July 22) with Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), she also populates the top 10 with three of her former No. 1s, marking the first time in nearly 60 years that a living artist has at least four albums at the same time in the top 10.
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is joined by her former chart-toppers Midnights (falling 4-5), Lover (8-7) and Folklore (13-10). She is the first living act to have four albums in the top 10 at the same time since the April 2, 1966-dated chart, when Herb Alpert also had four albums in the top 10 (Going Places at No. 2, Whipped Cream & Other Delights at No. 3, South of the Border at No. 9 and The Lonely Bull at No. 10).
Between Alpert and Swift, only one other act has placed at least four titles in the top 10 concurrently, and that was Prince, following his death in 2016, when he had five albums in the top 10 dated May 14, 2016. That week, the Purple One reigned in the top 10 with The Very Best of Prince (falling 1-2), the Purple Rain soundtrack (with The Revolution, 2-3), The Hits/The B-Sides (6-4), Ultimate (61-6) and 1999 (31-7). (Swift is also the only woman with four albums in the top 10 at the same since the Billboard 200 was combined from its previously separate mono and stereo album charts into one all-encompassing list in August of 1963.)
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new July 22, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on July 18. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
