'Fearless' (Taylor's Version) Opens At No. 1 On Billboard

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) opens at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, Billboard’s weekly ranking of the most-consumed full-lengths in the U.S., with 291,000 equivalent units shifted. Forbes reports that number is made up of 179,000 pure purchases, 109,000 streaming equivalents (which come from just under 143 million plays on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music) and 3,000 track sale equivalents, which means some people bought just a few tracks from the project and they were combined to form equivalent units.

Swift has now topped the Billboard 200 with all of the following nine albums: Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation, Lover, Folklore, Evermore and Fearless (Taylor’s Version). In addition to her many leaders, the singer-songwriter has also pushed two other titles, her debut full-length Taylor Swift and the Beautiful Eyes EP, into the top 10, bringing her total count to 11 placements in the important region.

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is the first of six albums Swift is planning on re-recording and re-releasing with slightly different arrangements and different names, for legal reasons. The pop, folk and country powerhouse is embarking on this lengthy process to try to make the best of the fact that the masters to all the material she recorded for her first half-dozen full-lengths have been sold more than once, and not to her.

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is just the sixth No. 1 album of 2021 on the Billboard 200, as three have ruled for more than one frame, with Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous controlling the tally for 10 consecutive frames. Swift claims two of those half-dozen champions, as her previous set Evermore earned two spins atop the list this year.