Taylor Swift tops Billboard 200 for the second time in 2020 with Evermore
Taylor Swift Announces Second Surprise Album, 'Evermore,' a 'Sister' Record to 'Folklore'
Surprise, again! Swift revealed a track list, music video plans, and more for her next album.
Taylor Swift has topped the Billboard 200 for the second time this year, and eighth time overall, with Evermore.
The surprise album, which debuted Dec. 11, has earned 329,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending on Dec. 17. It arrived less than five months after Swift dropped her first surprise album, Folklore, on July 24.
With this achievement, the singer is getting closer to Barbra Streisand's record among women of 11 No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200. Madonna, with nine, is the only other woman with more albums in the top spot than Swift.
Swift is also the first woman, and third act (alongside BTS and YoungBoy Never Broke Again), to have a pair of No. 1 albums on the chart this year.
Beth Garrabrant
Evermore debuts at No. 1 just four months and 18 days after Folklore opened atop the list dated Aug. 8. It's the shortest gap between new No. 1 spots on the Billboard 200 chart by a woman since Olivia Newton-John’s Have You Never Been Mellow went No. 1 in March 1975, five months and three days after If You Love Me Let Me Know earned the top spot.
The last time an act had a shorter wait between No. 1 spots was BTS, whose record Love Yourself: Answer hit the top of the chart just three months after Love Yourself: Tear.
In October, Folklore returned to No.1 on the Billboard 200 for an eighth non-consecutive week and it became the first album to sell a million copies in 2020. In September, Folklore became the best-selling album of 2020 after spending six consecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart. Later that month, Swift also surpassed Whitney Houston for most cumulative weeks at No. 1 by a woman in the Billboard 200 chart.
Evermore serves as the "sister record" to its predecessor, according to Swift. It features 15 songs, three of which feature collaborations with other artists — "Evermore" with Bon Iver, "Coney Island" with The National, and "No Body, No Crime" with Haim. Like Folklore, the singer-songwriter wrote the songs with Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, Justin Vernon, and someone named "WB" (presumably William Bowery, which is a pseudonym for Swift's boyfriend, Joe Alwyn).
While many fans have speculated that Swift is planning to release a third surprise album, the artist dispelled those rumors.
"Jimmy, I'm so tired. I'm just so exhausted," she said when Jimmy Kimmel joked about another LP on his show recently. "I've tired myself out. I have nothing left."
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