Taylor Swift Officially Bigger Than The Beatles After Breaking Record

Taylor Swift is bigger than The Beatles, at least in one way. She broke a long-standing U.K. chart [...]

By Daniel S. Levine

Taylor Swift is bigger than The Beatles, at least in one way. She broke a long-standing U.K. chart record held by the Fab Four for over 50 years thanks to the release of Fearless (Taylor's Version), Swift's third album in less than a year. The new Fearless features re-recordings of the songs from Swift's Grammy-winning 2008 studio album, as well as new recordings of songs she wrote at the time.

Fearless (Taylor's Version) topped the U.K.'s Official Albums Chart, making it her third different studio album to top the chart in just 259 days. Her two 2020 albums, Folklore and Evermore, also topped the chart. This is the fastest accumulation of three different Number 1 albums in the chart's history. The previous record was set by The Beatles, whose albums Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver topped the chart in 364 days, between 1965 and 1966.

The new Fearless earned over 21,000 chart sales, making it Swift's seventh U.K. Number 1 album. It even beat the original Fearless' peak at Number 5 in 2008. Swift's other albums to top the chart are Red (2012), 1989 (2014), Reputation (2017), Lover (2019), Folklore, and Evermore. Swift also has the third-most chart-topping albums in the U.K. among female solo artists, behind only Madonna (12) and Kylie Monique (8).

Swift has shown an appreciation for The Beatles in the past. In fact, Paul McCartney said he and Swift worked together to make sure Evermore and McCartney III didn't come out on the same week in December. After the two musicians met for a Rolling Stone cover in November, Swift told McCartney she was about to release Evermore.

"'So I was going to put it out on my birthday' — which I think was the 10th. And then she said, 'but I found out that you were going to put it out on the 10th so I moved to the 18th,'" McCartney told Howard Stern in December, notes Billboard. "And then she found out we were coming out on the 18th, so she moved back to the 10th. So, you know, people do keep out of each other's way. It's a nice thing to do."

Swift and McCartney sat down with Rolling Stone to talk about recording their new albums during the coronavirus lockdown. When she stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Swift said she was going to make sure the cover photo with McCartney was all over her house. "I'm building a whole new home with just that on every wall. Every brick has a little mini-picture of that," she jokingly told Kimmel. "None of the old homes are going to work anymore because they don't have enough of that [picture] on them."

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