Last Friday, Taylor Swift released the vinyl edition of evermore, the second of her two indie-leaning 2020 albums. In only 3 days, she broke the record for most vinyl sales on the first week of release.
Taylor Swift’s evermore Breaks Jack White’s Previous Record
Billboard reports that the vinyl version of evermore sold more than 40,000 copies in its first two days of sales. That means that, in those two days, Taylor Swift has broken the all-time record for sales of a vinyl record in a single week. Jack White set that record in 2014 when his solo LP Lazaretto sold 40,000 copies in its first week. That figure means she has already beaten the record previously held by Jack White’s ‘Lazaretto’; which sold 40,000 copies in the US in its first week of release in June 2014.
Before White, Pearl Jam held the title with their 1994 album ‘Vitalogy’, which shifted 34,000 copies in one week. It was the first album to chart in the Billboard 200 through vinyl sales alone since CDs began to dominate the music market.
The eleven-time Grammy winner initially released evermore on Dec. 11 of last year, describing it as a “sister album” to her surprise record, folklore. Upon its release, evermore debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
It took months for evermore to come out on vinyl since the album was a surprise release, and since physical editions, vinyl especially, take a long time to manufacture. Still, vinyl has a growing share of the music-buyer marketplace; according to Billboard, 27% of the albums sold in the US in 2020 were on vinyl. That share has been growing every year for the past 15 years.
Earlier this year, Taylor released the re-recorded version of her iconic album Fearless, which also topped the charts in just a matter of few days. Is there something that the singer can’t do?
