Taylor Swift Earns Her First No. 1 Debut on Hot Country Songs Chart With ‘Love Story (Taylor’s Version)’

Taylor Swift has returned to the top of the country charts, earning her first No. 1 debut on the Hot Country Songs chart with “Love Story (Taylor’s Version),” her newly released re-recording of her 2008 hit. The song gives Swift her eighth trip to the top of the Hot Country Songs chart and also opened at No. 1 on Country Streaming Songs and No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“This is my first time having a No. 1 debut on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and I’m so grateful to the fans for making this a possibility,” Swift told Billboard. “They’re the ones who emboldened me to reclaim my music and they really showed up this week to see it through. It blows me away that they’ve sent a song to No. 1 that had its first life over a decade ago. I couldn’t be happier that it happened now, and in this way.”

Swift’s original version of “Love Story” topped the Hot Country Songs chart in November 2008, and her new version’s achievement makes “Love Story” the second song to top the chart in different iterations by the same artist, after Dolly Parton with “I Will Always Love You.” Swift’s last trip to the top of the chart was with “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” which reigned for 10 weeks in 2012-13, and she is now the first artist with Hot Country Songs No. 1’s in each decade of the 21st century.

The Grammy winner is currently in the process of re-recording her first six albums, and she announced earlier this month that the new version of her sophomore album, 2008’s Fearless, will presumably arrive on April 9.

“When I think back on the Fearless album and all that you turned it into, a completely involuntary smile creeps across my face,” Swift wrote in a note to fans. “This was the musical era in which so many inside jokes were created between us, so many hugs exchanged and hands touched, so many unbreakable bonds formed. So before I say anything else, let me just say that it was a real honor to get to be a teenager alongside you.”

“Fearless was an album full of magic and curiosity, the bliss and devastation of youth,” she continued. “It was the diary of the adventures and explorations of a teenage girl who was learning tiny lessons with every new crack in the facade of the fairytale ending she’d been shown in the movies.” Swift’s new version of Fearless will include 26 songs, including six never-before-released tracks.