Daily Times

To no one’s surprise, Taylor Swift’s surprise album “folklore” is dominating the music charts. Swift’s eighth album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s 200 albums chart this week, marking the best first-week sales of the year and giving the pop star her seventh No. 1 title on the chart. According to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, the album sold 846,000 equivalent albums in the U.S. based on a combination of sales and streams.

The last album to sell more units in a single week? Swift’s “Lover” album, released last August.

The success makes Swift, 30, the first artist to have seven different albums sell at least 500,000 albums in a single week. Swift dropped “folklore” in a surprise form, announcing the album’s release a day before it came out on July 24. It features production and songwriting work from The National’s Aaron Dessner and frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff.

With 289.85 million on-demand streams of its songs, “folklore” also marks the largest streaming week for an album by a female act this year. Swift is third overall, behind the powerful streaming efforts of Juice WRLD’s “Legends Never Die” and Lil Uzi Vert´s “Eternal Atake.”

“Folklore” was only released digitally, but will be available as a CD on Aug. 7. The album was sold with a number of merchandise bundles, packaged with cardigans, hoodies, T-shirts, cell phone cases and more. A digital version of “folklore” came with a purchase of one of the merchandise items, counting as an album sale for Swift.