Charts analysis: Taylor Swift returns to albums summit

Resuming at No.1 despite its consumption falling for the third straight week, The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD) is the third of 12 No.1 albums by Taylor Swift to climb back to the summit after being dethroned. Emulating 2020 set Evermore and 2022’s Midnights, TTPD does so with consumption falling just 6.76% week-on-week to 29,740 units as her Eras tour rolls into Europe – 1,837 CDs, 1,313 vinyl albums. 15 cassettes, 429 digital downloads and 26,146 sales-equivalent streams. In so doing, it earns its third and Swift’s 23rd week at No.1, the latter tally including an impressive 19 (8.33%) of the 228 weeks that have elapsed so far in the 2020s. In America, where TTPD will secure its fourth straight week at No.1, Swift will have spent a much more impressive 73 weeks at No.1, more than any other solo artist – The Beatles lead the overall list with 131 weeks at the top. In Ireland, where TTPD is No.1 for the fourth straight week, Swift has spent 35 weeks at No.1. Swift’s return to the summit this week was anything but a formality, however, as she was up against familial Followill foursome Kings Of Leon, who were in pursuit of their seventh No.1 with ninth studio album, Can We Please Have Fun. Comprising a dozen new songs co-written by the quartet – brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared and their cousin Matthew – Can We Please Have Fun was ahead on sales flashes until Wednesday but its inferior streaming power saw it slip to No.2 in the final reckoning, with consumption of 17,981 units (6,614 CDs, 5,500 vinyl albums, 2,560 cassettes, 987 digital downloads and 2,320 sales-equivalent streams). That’s 7.93% below the 19,530 sales their last album, When You See Yourself, sold on debuting at No.1 in 2021. Their ninth Top 10 and 11th Top 75 album, Can We Please… nudges their overall UK album consumption to upwards of eight million – 8,000,485 to be precise, of which 2008 fourth album Only By The Night accounts for 3,178,352 units, 2007 third album Because Of The Times for 1,030,911 units and 2010 fifth album, Come Around Sundown for 995,014 units. Can We Please Have Fun topped all of the pure sales charts for which it was eligible, but ranked only 55th on streaming. American rapper Gunna’s sixth chart album – his entire solo output plus Lil Baby collaboration Drip Harder – One Of Wun is his fourth straight Top 10 entry debuting at No.4 (8,196 sales) to equal his best placing. Twenty years to the week after it debuted at No.1 on pure sales of 155,373, Keane’s debut album, Hopes And Fears, has been remastered and supplemented by b-sides, rarities and demos in new CD, vinyl, Blu-ray and digital anniversary editions, and is back in the chart for the first time in more than 17 years, re-entering at No.7 (6,926 sales). Its initial sales were very impressive as, by that point, they had only two hits, their No.3 debut smash Somewhere Only We Know and follow-up Everybody’s Changing, which opened and peaked at No.4 the day the album dropped. Hopes And Fears remains Keane’s biggest album, with to-date consumption of 2,950,712 units (all pure sales but for 88,094 sales-equivalent streams) outselling everything else by a margin of more than three to one. Somewhere Only We Know similarly leads their singles rankings, going triple platinum today (1,807,079 sales), with Everybody’s Changing (797,629 sales) second. With consumption off 80.44% week-on-week, Radical Optimism drops 1-3 (9,058 sales) for Dua Lipa. The rest of the Top 10: The Highlights (4-5, 8,171 sales) by The Weeknd, Guts (5-6, 7,985 sales) by Olivia Rodrigo, 50 Years: Don’t Stop (7-8, 6,278 sales) by Fleetwood Mac, Gold: Greatest Hits (9-9, 5,979 sales) by ABBA and Sour (10-10, 5,434 sales) by Olivia Rodrigo. In the Top 10 continuously this year until now, Stick Season slips 8-11 (5,365 sales) for Noah Kahan. Also checking out of the Top 10 are Top 200 departees, Undefeated by Frank Turner (856 sales) and Inevitable Incredible (637 sales) by Kelly Jones, which debuted at No.3 and No.6 respectively last week. His five previous album chart entries all peaked inside the Top 10 but Mancunian rapper Bugzy Malone’s latest – the eight song EP, King Of The North – falls short, debuting at No.13 (5,153 sales). Also new to the Top 75: 36 Hours (No.28, 3,599 sales), a collaborative mixtape between London rappers M Huncho and Potter Payper, providing the former’s seventh chart entry, the latter’s fifth; A Place In Your Heart (No.30, 3,441 sales), the eighth and lowest-charting studio album by Gabrielle; The Loop (No.36, 3,075 sales), the fifth album and second chart entry for 31-year-old singer/songwriter Jordan Rakei, born in New Zealand, raised in Australia and living in London; Postindustrial Hometown Blues (No.37, 3,023 sales), the first album by Birmingham punk/hip-hop duo Big Special – singer Joe Hicklin and drummer Callum Moloney. Outside the Top 40 albums: You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (No.43, 2,897 sales), the third album and first Top 75 entry by hardcore punk quintet Knocked Loose from Kentucky, arriving eight years after its predecessor, A Different Shade Of Blue, reached No.135; and I’m Totally Fine With It, Don’t Give A F**k anymore (No.65, 2,345 sales), the eighth studio album and third chart entry for Scottish indie duo Arab Strap. Recorded in 1981, and first released in 2007, when it peaked at No.20, Queen’s Canadian concert recording Rock Montreal has been re-issued on CD, vinyl, Blu-ray and digitally to coincide with its debut on Disney+, and re-enters at No.31 (3,422 sales). The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess (50-47, 2,762 sales) reaches a new peak for Chappell Roan. The UK entry by Olly Alexander finished 18th out of 25 at the Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden last Saturday (May 11) but both semi-finals and the final of the 68th staging of the competition drew big audiences for the BBC, sending demand for the Eurovision Song Contest: Malmö album soaring. Hosting all 37 entries for the competition, it jumps 3-1 on the compilation chart with consumption growing 339.22% week-on-week to 11,589 units (1,560 CDs, 537 digital downloads, 9,492 sales-equivalent streams). It is the fourth Eurovision album to top the chart, following 2021 retrospective Now That’s What I Call Eurovision, Eurovision Song Contest: Turin 2022, and Eurovision Song Contest: Liverpool 2023. The latter album sold 17,477 copies a year ago this week, and has to-date consumption of 88,817 units, both records for a Eurovision album. Overall album sales are down 1.46% week-on-week at 2,426,756, 7.12% above same week 2023 sales of 2,265,403. Physical product accounts for 251,225 sales, 10.35% of the total.

Multi-platinum-selling, Grammy-winning rock icon Lenny Kravitz returns this month with Blue Electric Light, his first new studio album since 2018. Here, he tells Music Week about standing his ground with labels, and why he’s not always as cool as you think he is... INTERVIEW: Colleen HARRIS During the pandemic, I recorded three or four albums... “Blue Electric Light is one of them, and this is the one I wanted to release first. I still think in albums. I still think in [terms of] this chunk of music that represents a time [in my life]. Singles are great, but for me they’re a body of work that represents a piece of time, and it takes more than one song. As an artist I’m just in a place of light and celebration, gratitude and love, God and humanity – regardless of what’s happening on the planet.” Before I first got signed... “I was putting all my energy into trying to get in this position where I could share my music with the world. It was my passion. I had blinders on, that’s all I saw – I had tunnel vision. Back then I was just listening to everything: Miles Davis, David Bowie, Prince, Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Simon And Garfunkel, Carole King, Ray Charles, Fela Kuti, John Coltrane, the Ramones… Opera!” I didn’t take some record deals that were offered to me early on... “They wanted me to change and I just wouldn’t do it. I didn’t understand it at all. And I wasn’t willing to give in, even though I needed the money – and I was living in a car. It was really important to me that I did what represented me. There are still boxes and there are still categories, but it’s much more open now. The best decision I made in the industry is not giving in for the big deal, and not changing myself for the big deal: I demanded I have creative control in my contract and that I kept my publishing. I made the right choices, which is why I’m still here, I suppose!” To any artists coming up against barriers... “I would say that if you’re really about expressing yourself, and it’s not just about becoming famous – which some people do this for – then stick to your guns and do what is you. Express yourself. Give what you’ve been given. When you’re yourself, you can’t lose.” The best lesson I’ve learned about the industry is... “That it doesn’t dictate who you are and what you have to do, based on the business and the categories, and the moneymaking. It’s an industry; that’s what it is. It’s changed a lot. We’ve lost a lot in the industry; it’s not nearly as lucrative as it was. If you’re not a touring musician and you can’t play live, it’s gonna be very hard to make a living.” The biggest misconception that people have about me is... “That I’m this sort of uber-cool character. If you ask my daughter and my friends, they’ll tell you, I’m quite goofy. To know someone, you have to be around them in their surroundings. If you came and hung out with me and was around me for a while, you’d see many more sides.” As a young Black man from the Bahamas, my grandfather... “Worked his way from Florida to New York to find work so he could make some money and then send for his family. The train stopped at Washington, DC, and because he was Black, he could not go to the stand to buy anything to drink or eat. At that moment, he said to himself: ‘One day I will come back to this town, I will go to the White House and I will be a guest.’ Cut to years later, I’m in the White House during the time of President Clinton and I took my grandfather. They invited me to come play. As I was telling the Clintons the story, President Clinton started to tear up. It really touched him and he says, ‘Wait a minute.’ Next thing, we’re in the Oval Office. My grandfather was sitting in the presidential seat behind the desk. That was a surreal moment, that my grandfather lived his vision. Through him making it possible for me, and then me making it possible for him… it was beautiful.”

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