Taylor Swift notches her biggest ever debut week for an album

1989 (Taylor's Version) has given Taylor Swift her best ever debut week for an album and the biggest debut of any album since 2015.

The release debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart with 1.653 million album equivalent units, more than her previous best effort, 2022's Midnights which received 1.578m.

The original 1989 album marked Swift's departure from country music and debuted with 1.297m units in 2014.

It comes amid a prosperous year for the singer.

Swift's ongoing Eras tour is tipped to become the highest-grossing tour of all time and is expected to take in US$2.2 billion (NZ$3.7 billion) from ticket sales in North America alone.

The Eras Tour has also been captured in a concert film, which arrived in theatres earlier this month and earned US$96 million ($165 million) in the US and Canada, movie chain AMC saying it is the highest-grossing concert film for an opening weekend.

In fact, the pop star found a place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index late last month, her net worth now estimated to be US$1.1 billion (NZ$1.8 billion).

But why is Swift rerecording her albums?

The rerecording saga began in 2019 when Swift's old label, Big Machine Records, was sold to manager Scooter Braun who has worked with some of music's biggest stars including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and even Swift's nemesis, Kanye West.

This sale gave Braun the rights to all of the master recordings of Swift's music, meaning that any proceeds from the song's use in TV shows, movies, or ads would go to him.

Swift described the news as "my worst case scenario" in a social media post, and vowed in an interview to rerecord everything that he now owns.

After negotiating with Republic Records in 2018, Swift will own the copyright to the new recordings, giving licensers the opportunity to work with Swift and her team rather than with Braun.

This would allow Swift to reclaim some command over her music and how it is used.

More on this topic

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour dances to No. 1 at the box office

Internationally, it's estimated to have earned somewhere between $52 to $55 million, bringing its global total in the range of $212 million to $219 million.

World

October 17, 2023

The rerecordings began releasing in 2021, when Swift dropped Fearless (Taylor's Version).

With the release of 1989 (Taylor's Version), there are just two of her previous albums left to rerelease: Taylor Swift and Reputation.