Taylor Swift's 'Fearless (Taylor's Version)' Returns to No. 1 on Billboard 200Taylor Swift’s Fearless (Taylor’s Version) returns to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for a second nonconsecutive week atop the list. The album surges from No. 157 to No. 1 with 152,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 7 (up 1,931%), according to MRC Data. The set vaults back to No. 1 after the Oct. 1 release of a signed CD available only in Swift’s webstore and its vinyl LP. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) debuted at No. 1 nearly six months ago, on the April 24-dated Billboard 200 chart.
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. 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 Oct. 16, 2021-dated chart [where Fearless (Taylor’s Version) returns to No. 1] will be posted in full on Billboard's website on Oct. 12. For all chart news, follow
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Of Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’s 152,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 7, album sales comprise 146,000 (up 15,807%), SEA units comprise 6,000 (down 1%, equaling 8.72 million streams of the album’s tracks) and TEA units comprise a negligible number.
Of the 146,000 copies sold for the week, CD sales comprise 77,000, while vinyl LP sales total 67,000. The album sold about 1,000 in cassettes and 1,000 in digital downloads, too. (The album was discounted at digital retail, which spurred a 268% increase in digital album sales, but only 1,000 copies sold for the week.)
Strikingly, 29% of the album’s to-date CD sales were generated in the week ending Oct. 7, concurrent with the availability of its signed CD. The signed CD was only sold via Swift’s webstore, for a limited time, during a pre-order window in late September. (Swift apparently signed so many copies, she “may never write the same again,” as her hand “is now frozen in the permanent shape of a claw.”) Of Fearless (Taylor's Version)'s 400,000 total album sales to-date, CD sales comprise 264,000 of that sum -- with 77,000 of those CDs sold in the latest tracking week.
As for the vinyl LP sales of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), its 67,000 sold marks the fourth-largest sales week for a vinyl album since MRC Data began tracking music sales in 1991. Her own Evermore holds the record, with 102,000 sold in its first week of availability on vinyl (June 12-dated chart). The debut frames of Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour (76,000; Sept. 4) and Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever (73,000; Aug. 14) are in second and third place, respectively.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) was issued in two vinyl editions: a gold-colored version that was sold through Swift’s webstore and widely available to all retailers and a red-colored edition exclusive to Target.
With the rush in sales for Fearless (Taylor’s Version), its release-to-date sales now climb to 400,000 in the U.S. That makes it the No. 2-selling album of 2021, second only to Swift’s own 2020 release Evermore, which has sold 434,000 copies in 2021. The No. 3-selling album of 2021 is Rodrigo’s 2021 release Sour, with 378,000. Thus, Swift has both the Nos. 1 and 2-selling albums of 2021, as well as the year’s top-selling album released in 2021: Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
For good measure, Swift has three albums among the top 10-sellers of 2021, as Folklore is the No. 7 best-selling album of the year, with 228,000.
With the return of Fearless (Taylor’s Version) to No. 1 after nearly six months, it’s the first album to wait that long between weeks on top since last November, when Luke Combs’ What You See Is What You Get returned to No. 1 after nearly a year. (Earlier in 2021, on the June 12-dated chart, Swift’s own Evermore returned to No. 1 for a fourth week, after nearly five months, following its vinyl LP release.)
Further, with Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’s leap from No. 157 to No. 1, it has the largest positional jump to No. 1 since the April 12, 1997, chart, when The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death rose 176-1 after street date violation sales enabled its debut on the chart a week early.
Lastly, Swift’s total weeks at No. 1, across all nine of her No. 1 albums, now rises to 54. She continues to have the third-most weeks atop the list dating to the chart’s 1956 start. The Beatles have the most, with 132, while Elvis Presley is in second place with 67.
Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is a re-recorded version of Swift’s No. 1 2008 album Fearless. The re-recorded album has 26 tracks, including re-recordings of the original 13 songs on Fearless, along with the six bonus songs added to a 2009 reissue of Fearless (dubbed the Platinum Edition) and the 2010 single “Today Was a Fairytale.” Beyond those 20 re-recordings, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) also has six newly recorded “from the vault” songs that were written for the original Fearless album but were never recorded and released until 2021.