Taylor Swift has put an end to Morgan Wallen’s three-month streak at No 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Wallen looked set to celebrate a 13th straight week at the top of the album charts before Swift’s 2022 record Midnights swooped in to reclaim the top spot.
The resurgence of Midnights is thanks to the new release of deluxe editions featuring hugely anticipated new tracks.
All the different variations of Swift’s 10th studio album count as one for charting purposes.
As reported by Variety, the record has not left the top 10 since it came out last October.
Recently, Midnights spent a number of weeks at No 2 before its current return to the top spot.
As a result, Wallen’s album, One Thing at a Time, slipped to No 2. The country singer’s record raked in 126,000 album-equivalent units for the week compared to Midnights’ 282,000 units.
Lil Durk’s Almost Healed registered at No 3 on the charts with 125,000 units.
This is the sixth (non-consecutive) week that Midnights has spent at No 1 since its release. It is the first time that the album has topped the chart this year.
Fans who already owned at least one version of the album – on digital, CD, and/or vinyl – rushed to repurchase the record for its newly added bonus tracks.
There were two separately titled deluxe editions. One was a digital-only Til Dawn varita, which included all the tracks previously available on the 3am deluxe edition, and three more: “Hits Different” – a track previously available only on the CD exclusively sold at Target, plus a version of “Snow on the Beach” with added vocals from Lana Del Rey, and a remix of “Karma” featuring rapper Ice Spice.
The other deluxe version – called the Late Night edition – includes most of the tracks that were previously part of the 3am edition, the Lana Del Rey mix, the Ice Spice mix, as well as the hugely anticipated, previously unreleased song “You’re Losing Me (From the Vault)”.
This particular edition was made available to purchase as a CD at the merch stands at Swift’s stadium shows. It was also available to download for 24 hours at the singer’s online store.
“You’re Losing Me (From the Vault)” is not available for streaming or separate download at the time of writing.
The standard version of Midnights was also recently issued in an additional violet colour, which is likely to have contributed to the added sales. Still, its impact on sales is expectedly far less so than the deluxe versions featuring new tracks.
You can read The Independent’s five-star review of Midnights here.
