The biggest hits and chart legacy of Taylor Swift's Red ahead of its rerelease

Red has the most UK Top 10 singles of any Taylor Swift album.
taylorswift_redpress.jpeg

Many credit Taylor Swift's fifth album, the blockbuster 1989, with transforming her from a country bumpkin ingenue into a pop superstar, but if you were paying attention her metamorphosis really began two years earlier, with the release of her fourth album, Red. 

Last week, it was announced that Red would be the second of Tay's past records to get a (Taylor's Version) rerecording, following in the footsteps of Fearless earlier this year, which became her seventh consecutive Number 1 UK album

Set to be comprised of a mammoth 30 songs (including one that is ten minutes long, heavily hinted to be the much sought-after original version of ballad All Too Well), the collection will drop November 19, which means we have a lot of time to get reacquainted with the original LP before then. 

Even now, almost nine years since its initial release, Red sounds and feels like Taylor evolving before our eyes; taking the lessons she learnt from Fearless and Speak Now, and pushing her craft (and penchant for pop hooks) in bold, weird new directions. 

There are stately rock ballads (State of Grace, Holy Ground), pop confections from Max Martin and Shellback (We Are Never..., I Knew You Were Trouble and 22) that act as precursors to 1989 and the album's centrepiece (All Too Well), Taylor's greatest technical accomplishment as a songwriter. 

The numbers back Red's ambition up too. At the time of writing, the album's total chart sales amount to 772,000 copies. Broken down, that's 397,000 physical copies, 222,000 downloads and 153,000 streaming equivalent albums. Red also debuted atop the Official Albums Chart, becoming Taylor's first-ever UK Number 1 album and the first in a still unbroken run of seven chart-topping LPs. To date, Madonna (12) and Kylie Minogue (8) are the only female artists with more. 

Red also has the honour of having the most UK Top 10 singles out of any Taylor Swift album. Four tracks in total - I Knew You Were Trouble (2), We Are Never... (4), Everything Has Changed (7) and 22 (9) - reached the Top 10, which is more than 1989 and Folklore, which had three each.

By and far the most popular track from Red is I Knew You Were Trouble - a synth-pop outlier with elements of EDM that became (at the time) Taylor's highest-charting entry on the Official Singles Chart at Number 2, equalling the peak of Love Story a few years earlier. Overall, it's amassed combined chart sales of 1.4 million, including 56 million streams and 879,000 downloads.

Following in its wake is the quirky lead single We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, the first song in a fruitful partnership with production wizards Max Martin and Shellback. We Are Never... boasts combined chart sales of 1.1 million and is also the most-streamed video of the Red era with 5.3 million total views.

Closely behind is Everything Has Changed, a collaboration with friend and contemporary Ed Sheeran with chart sales of 769k, including 45.1 million combined streams. In fourth place is the perky 22 with total chart sales of 627k, backed up by 34.1 million combined streams, and the juddering title track comes in fifth, amassing 242k combined chart sales and 18.1 million streams in total. 

The album's Top 10 biggest tracks also include fan-favourite All Too Well (145k), dreamy promo single Begin Again (114k), and The Last Time with Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody (108k).

The biggest songs from Taylor Swift's Red in Official Chart sales order

POS TITLE
1 I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE
2 WE ARE NEVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER
3 EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED
4 22
5 RED
6 ALL TOO WELL
7 BEGIN AGAIN
8 THE LAST TIME
9 STATE OF GRACE
10 TREACHEROUS
11 STAY STAY STAY
12 I ALMOST DO
13 HOLY GROUND
14 STARLIGHT
15 COME BACK... BE HERE
16 SAD BEAUTIFUL TRAGIC
17 THE LUCKY ONE
18 THE MOMENT I KNEW
19 GIRL AT HOME

©2021 Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.

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NN

Nu No

0

They just forgot to add she also hold the records for lowest week sales ever to get a #01 album in UK and to get a #01 in December as her surprise releases were carefuly released on the lowest comptetion weekly releases booked. Still a great achievement but her sales (even chart points including streaming) are really low for such chart records as most albums failed to sell much in the long run.

She does have 3 multi-platinum albums in UK: "Red" and "Fearless" achieved 2 platinum and "1989" is her only album above 1 million certified 4 platinum. So "Red" re-release expectactive as big as "Fearless" but "1989" will probably be her most successful re-release in UK.

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Blank

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Can't wait for this - a 3rd #1 of the year. First female and only 3rd (?) artist ever to do it if it gets there:
behind Beatles and T.Rex. No one has ever achieved 4 in a year....she could be the first

NN

Nu No

0

What are you talking about? Sure that in this streaming Era and automatic albums deliveries help artist to get there when they are out with different rules (until the 90's it took 2 to 3 weeks to have the album selling across all the shops in the country) and artists like Taylor take all marketing chances they can to release in slow weeks with maximum gains to achieve this. Still is impressive she is doing it when she only have one #01 Song Hit in UK. But she is doing it with cheap marketing tricks and re-recording of old albums (and old bonus tracks) not with new material or compiilations with some new fresh material. "The Beatles" even got to #01 with a remaster of one of their albums 50 years later (I may be wrong but I doubt that any Taylor Swift album in 40 or 50 years will get to even be TOP 10).

An album with 30 songs means that if someone streams it full "buys equivalent" 3 albums and not just one. Yet a Beatles album with 30 tracks selling back in the day would only ever count as 1 sale against other albums (some with 9 or 10 tracks). Rules are different and Taylor Swift Record Label marketing team is doing it all right and they should be appretiated too as without them she would never get these chart records.

It's good for Taylor to release as much as she can quick as her sales for her last album to get Platinum certification in UK was "Reputation" released back in 2017. Today most albums peak quick and fall fast (none of her 2020 relases was TOP 10 best selling of the year in UK despite multiple weeks at #01 with really low sales in each week to be #01).

She is getting good chart album peaks but her commercial peak in UK is long gone as 2012 "Red" was her album with most TOP 10 Hits and 2nd best selling album, her 2014 "1989" is her best selling album in UK (and only milllion seller) and "Reputation" her only album with a #01 Hit (but only 2 Top 10 Hits) and 3rd best selling album she have in UK.

"Fearless (Taylor Version)" had lot of hype as it was the first re-recording. It managed to get to #01 but was quicly out of the charts spending 4 weeks inside TOP 40 and 7 weeks inside the TOP 10 (and still wasn't awarded a silver certification meaning sales are still lower than 60k chart units for this album - when you think that after 32 years releasing songs Kylie Minogue latest album sold 55k on first week and was silver the next week put's it into perspective). Not sure how will they create hype enough to make this "new" album streamed a lot on first week but 30 tracks are 3 chart units for each album full streamed so that's a security net already.

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I mean the statistical facts:

She broke the Beatles speed record last year (3 #1 albums in the fastest time) and became the first female ever, first artist in almost 50 years and only the 3rd(?) artist ever to achieve 2 new #1 albums of new material in a calendar year in the process.

Having had 2 #1 albums already this year, she will equal last year's achievement again (2 new #1) and equal only the Beatles and T. Rex's 3 in a calendar year. T. Rex's total included a new album, re-issue getting to #1 for the first time and a greatest hits, so not being of new material is a fair test against the chart records as they stand. No one has ever achieved 3 #1 albums of new material or 4 #1 albums at all in a calendar year.

Rag 'n' Bone Man sold 35k copies to be #1 and Kylie was the fastest selling album of the year so far at the time and 2nd best selling weekly total for the whole of 2020, so I'm well aware of the low sales needed. This makes the short-term one-week peak all the more likely, which will equal Kylie's career. Fearless sold 21k - enough to be more than double (11,000 ahead) of the #2 record that week.

Only 3 albums have spent more than 1 week at #1 in the last year. 2 of them are hers and the other one is still there!

Also, the lack of an award doesn't necessarily mean lack of sales. They have to be claimed for. They are not awarded automatically as soon as the relevent sale number goes through the till. It could well have passed the threshold without being claimed for.

GF

Gary Feld

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You were doing so well, until the last paragraph.... If you were referring to the USA, then yes, you are correct, you have to apply to RIAA to be certified, but in the UK, its automatic, when each sales level is reached.

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Blank

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Things may have changed for streaming and/or Brit Certified since I looked at it then. In the physical era you had to apply for it. As the sales were to wholesale rather than over-the-counter, you could get mismatches in both directions too: (sales without the award, and award without the sales).