Taylor Swift’s New Album Breaks Vinyl Sales Record with a Catch

For reasons that are still unclear to this writer, few modern musicians — if any — are as polarizing as Taylor Swift.

Those who love her, the “Swifties,” offer her unwavering support no matter what she does, or even if she’s an actual witch. Those who hate her could see Swift walk on water, and they would point out she can’t swim.

It’s all a very outsized reaction to a woman who makes music for a living.

But despite whatever confusion may exist as to why Taylor Swift engenders such strong emotions one way or another, it’s inarguable that she does, so it’s little surprise that when the 34-year-old released a new album on April 19, “The Tortured Poets Department” quickly became a hot topic in the entertainment world.

Clandestine social media feuds? Check.

Parents upset over dirty lyrics? Obviously.

Allegations of racism? Indeed.

Self-comparisons to Jesus? I’m not going to lie — I didn’t see this one coming, but it’s definitely a thing that happened, too.

Indeed, there are many, many different ways to analyze “The Tortured Poets Department,” as one can clearly tell from the above.

Less than a week after the album’s release, there’s a new way to analyze the album, and it’s certainly an interesting one: Vinyl sales.

As reported on by both Variety and Billboard, “The Tortured Poets Department” sold over 700,000 vinyl copies in the three days following the album’s release, breaking a record held by… Taylor Swift.

That 700,000 figure eclipses the 693,000 sold by “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” when it came out on vinyl in late October 2023.

(And for the morbidly curious, Swift also holds the previous vinyl sales record before “1989,” when she sold over 500,000 copies of “Midnights” on vinyl in 2022.)

That is, to put it mildly, a lot of vinyl records sold by Swift.

And while those sales records are mighty impressive in and of themselves, it does gloss over a rather important caveat: Vinyl sales data isn’t exactly comprehensive.

In short, as both Variety and Billboard note, the tracking of vinyl sales constitutes the “modern era,” which is just a fancy way of saying that vinyl sales data tracking has only existed in earnest since 1991… well after the proper heyday of vinyl records.

Selling 700,000 vinyl records is impressive, period. This is especially the case in a digital age where most people prefer the convenience of weightless MP3s to physical media.

But calling it a “record,” no matter how true, does ignore some important context, like calling Hakeem Olajuwon the NBA’s all-time blocks leader when blocks weren’t even a recorded stat until 1973 (Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell is almost assuredly the “real” NBA blocks leader).

This isn’t to diminish the impressive feats of Olajuwon and Swift.

It’s just to bring attention to the fact that numbers sometimes do, in fact, lie… or at least can miss some crucial context.