CHART FINAL: SAVVY AS EVER

Taylor Swift vaults to the top of the HITS Top 50 behind record-breaking vinyl sales and strategic digital versions of her latest original album, evermore (Republic). Swift moved around 100k vinyl units of evermore this week—the biggest one-week vinyl sales total in the modern era, crushing Jack White’s previous record of 40k for 2014’s Lazaretto. On top of that, Tay added four “digitally signed” albums, with three new options for cover art, to her web store midweek. The push in pure sales, which totaled 178.7k, lifted evermore to 187.8k units, outpacing phenom of the moment Olivia Rodrigo.

This marks evermore’s fourth non-consecutive week at #1. Since folklore dropped in July 2020, Swift has spent 13 weeks at #1 with three different titles: folklore, evermore and Fearless (Taylor’s Version).

Rodrido’s SOUR (Geffen/Interscope), which became the year’s biggest debut last week, moves to #2 with 183.5k. Led by her latest smash, “good 4 u,” along with unprecedented streaming numbers, SOUR is now the second-biggest album of the year in total activity (915k), trailing only Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album (Big Loud/Republic). SOUR led the week in streams with more than 200m.

Def Jam’s DMX lands the top debut with the posthumous album EXODUS, which enters the chart at #8 with 32k. Juice WRLD’s Goodbye & Good Riddance (Grade A/Interscope) moves back into the Top 10 thanks to a special three-year-anniversary re-release with two new tracks.

You will note that IGA enjoys four titles in the Top 10, three of those (Rodrigo, J. Cole and Moneybagg Yo) in the Top 5.

Streeting this week are a collaborative album from Lil Baby & Lil Durk (Quality Control/Alamo/Motown), the 20th anniversary edition of Alicia Keys’ Songs in A Minor (RCA) and a new album from Big Machine’s Brett Young.