LONDON, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 30: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) (EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE) Taylor Swift attends the … [+]
Taylor Swift didn’t claim the biggest album in the world in 2023. That honor instead went to Seventeen, whose FML was named the most-consumed project on the planet last year by the IFPI. While she might not appear at No. 1 on the annual ranking of the most popular studio efforts, the singer still managed to dominate the ranking in her own way.
Swift claims five of the top 20 albums in the world in 2023, according to the IFPI’s list. Two of those titles appear inside the top 10, while the other three sit just below that highest tier on the 20-spot roster.
Midnights ranks as Swift’s top-performing album globally last year. The set, which was released in late 2022–and ended up on that year’s list of the biggest albums as well–lands at No. 4.
Just behind Midnights comes another album from Swift, giving her back-to-back top five wins. 1989 (Taylor’s Version) debuts at No. 5. The latest installment in her re-recordings series was one of the most successful so far globally, as millions loved the original 1989 and wanted to hear it again—as well as a handful of new cuts that were added to its tracklist.
Swift snags three more top sellers in a row, with a trio of her efforts appearing just underneath the top 10. The pop superstar’s Lover is back on this yearly tally at No. 11. That’s an incredible placement for a set that was released in 2019. Lover was spurred back to popularity by the release of one last single, “Cruel Summer,” which ranks as one of the biggest songs in the world in 2023.
Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) comes next at No. 12. One of two albums Swift released in 2023, it was not quite as popular as 1989 (Taylor’s Version), though clearly the world was still intrigued to listen to the reworked take on one of her earliest projects.
Swift’s winning streak wraps at No. 13 with Folklore. That folksy-leaning album was released in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, and it has not faded from public consciousness very much since then. Like a few other Swift titles, it has appeared on previous IFPI lists as well.
With five top-performing albums, Swift owns more spots on the tally than any other artist by a huge margin. Only two other names manage to appear on the IFPI’s ranking more than once. Both Seventeen and Stray Kids scored a pair of bestsellers that were big enough to find space on this chart.
