‘1989’ is Taylor Swift’s Most Popular Album

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 3, 11:00AM EST

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‘1989’ is Taylor Swift’s Most Popular Album — © Mark Metcalfe / Getty Images

Taylor Swift has sold well over 100 million albums and her audio and video streams have topped 78 billion. Based on recent sales, she has only gotten started. Her new album, “Midnight”, has been on top of the Billboard Top Album Sales list for 12 weeks in a row. According to Billboard, “Midnights now has the most weeks at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales chart since the Frozen soundtrack ruled for 13 nonconsecutive weeks in 2014.” And, it is not even her most popular album. That position is held by “1989.”

“1989” entered the Billboard 200 on November 15, 2014. It was on the list for an astonishing 412 weeks. “1989” is an unapologetic pop record, with Taylor Swift announcing that the LP was her first “documented, official” album of that kind. The LP moved away from her country roots and featured a synth-pop sound created by heavy synthesizers and programmed drums. She collaborated with Ryan Tedder from OneRepublic, fun.’s Jack Antonoff, and Imogen Heap, and took a more light-hearted approach to relationships in contrast to her previous albums.

The album was named for her birth year and as such symbolized her artistic rebirth. It was certified nine-times platinum in 2017. The LP produced seven singles and three of them – “”Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” and “Bad Blood” – went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. (These are Taylor Swift’s biggest hits.)

Swift began her career as a country music singer and songwriter. She had made a nearly full transition to pop by 2017. Over the course of her career, she has released 10 studio albums and three live concert albums.

Click here for all of Taylor Swift’s most popular albums.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.