Taylor Swift overtakes K-Pop band to maintain first place for the seventh week

Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is at No. 1 again, topping the Billboard 200 for the seventh time in a row.

Since its April release in historic numbers — breaking streaming and vinyl sales records, and posting the biggest opening week of Swift’s career — “Tortured Poets” has been unstoppable, even as its performance has gradually slowed. In recent weeks, the company has suspended challenges from Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa, and this week it banned the latest challenge from K-pop band Ateez.

In its final week of release, “Tortured Poets” generated 148,000 copies in sales in the United States, including 157 million streams and 27,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to tracking service Luminate. Since its release, the album has generated approximately 4.3 million sales and nearly 2.5 billion streams in the United States alone.

Of the 14 albums Swift has sent to No. 1 in her career — going back to “Fearless,” her second album in 2008 — “Tortured Poets” has now achieved the longest consecutive stretch at the top, surpassing “Folklore,” which spent its first six weeks in 2020 at No. 1 on Billboard’s main LP chart (several of Swift’s albums, including “Folklore,” have had more turns at No. 1 overall, but not consecutively.)

Also this week, Ateez’s “Golden Hour: Part.1,” a six-track “mini-album,” opened at No. 2 with equivalent sales of 131,000, largely due to its popularity on CD and vinyl. “Where I’ve Been, Not Where I’m Going” by Chabuzi, the singer-songwriter who appeared on Beyoncé’s latest album “Cowboy Carter,” opened at No. 5 on the equivalent of 50,000 tracks.

Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft” fell to number three after spending its first two weeks at number two, and Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” reached number four in its 67th week on the chart.