NSYNC Joins A Club That Includes Taylor Swift, Eminem, And The Backstreet Boys

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY – SEPTEMBER 12: Taylor Swift (2nd L) accepts the Best Pop award for “Anti-Hero” … [+]

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Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department is not just a commercial success; it’s a juggernaut. It’s the kind of sales win that’s only seen once every few years or so. In just the first day that the full-length was available, it sold better than any album released this year, and it helped the singer join a very exclusive club.

In its first day—Friday, April 19—The Tortured Poets Department sold 1.4 million copies. It’s important to note that the figure reported by Billboard is pure purchases, not equivalent units, which are used to rank the Billboard 200 and which include streams.

With 1.4 million copies sold, The Tortured Poets Department claims one of the six largest sales weeks in U.S. history—or at least in the Nielsen (now Luminate) modern era of digital tracking that began in 1991. That’s right—Swift’s latest full-length claims the sixth-largest sales week of all time—in just one day.

Who ranks above Swift, with larger sales weeks? Just a handful of musical acts have scored even more impressive debut frames with new albums, and she’s in some pretty incredible company.

The record for the largest pure sales week in U.S. history remains Adele’s 25. The frame that her third album first became available, it sold 3.378 million copies. Its final total—which included streaming equivalents—was very close to the 3.5 million mark.

In between Adele and Swift come two titles from NSYNC and one from the Backstreet Boys. Boy bands ruled the charts in the early days of the 2000s, as is evidenced by the incredible successes enjoyed by these two musical groups.

NSYNC’s No Strings Attached debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2000 with 2.416 million copies sold. Their follow-up, Celebrity, opened with 1.878 million copies purchased. The Backstreet Boys’ Black & Blue also hit the top spot in 2000 with 1.591 million albums sold in one week.

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Eminem is also a member of this group, thanks to one of his biggest immediate successes. In 2000, his The Marshall Mathers LP sold 1.76 million copies in its first seven-day period.

The Tortured Poets Department still has several days in which to continue to add to its cumulative first-week total. By the time all is said and done, its sales sum may be several hundred thousand copies larger. When including streaming equivalents, it looks like Swift’s latest is headed for a debut of well over two million units.