Taylor Swift became the first artist in the history of the Rolling Stone album chart to land five consecutive weeks in the No. 1 position, as “Folklore” was held over in the top spot with 87,400 album units in its fifth frame.
Although the Rolling Stone chart, which is powered by sales and streaming figures gathered by Alpha Data, is only 14 months old, Swift’s achievement is still a significant one in the fickle pop market and accomplishes a staying power that may outlast even that of her previous album, “Lover,” which came out after the inception of the chart last year. The tally for “Folklore” this week was only slightly down from its 93,000 figure in week four.
As with other recent weeks, the nearest competition Swift faced was from the posthumous releases by rappers Pop Smoke and Juice WRLD, who again came in at Nos. 2-3, with 77,900 and 66,600 album units, respectively. The “Hamilton” cast album moved up one spot to No. 4 this week, collecting 50,400 album units.
The week did see several big-name new releases, but none performed spectacularly. The biggest bow belonged to veteran rapper Nas, whose “KIng’s Disease” came in at No. 5 with 43,800 album units.
The Killers’ “Imploding the Mirage” debuted at No. 7 with 34,300 album units. When it comes to full-album sales, the band did better than anyone currently on the chart except for Swift, selling 28,100 copies of the complete album. Streams for the Killers’ album, though, at 6.7 million, lagged far behind any of the others in the top 10 (like Pop Smoke, who only sold 2,000 full albums but had 98 million streams).
The third highest debuting album of the week was Tim McGraw’s return to the Big Machine label, “Here on Earth,” which bowed at No. 14 with album units of 23,400. His tally was divided between 15,500 full album sales, 9,600 song sales and 8.4 million streams.
Blackbear was close behind McGraw at No. 15, collecting 22,100 album units for “Everything Means Nothing.” Further down, Maluma entered the chart at No. 40 with 13,800 album units for “Papi Juancho.”