Taylor Swift’s Downward Shift Is Unusual For Her

Taylor Swift often dominates rankings of the top-performing albums in most Western markets. Some frames are bigger than others when it comes to her extensive discography, and while the most successful superstar on the planet rarely has a truly lackluster week, it’s unusual to see none of her albums climbing.

A mix of continued fan activity and varying levels of competition typically works in Swift’s favor, allowing at least one project to gain ground. This time around in the United Kingdom, however, her discography is uniformly trending downward.

Swift currently occupies six spots on the Official Albums chart in the U.K. She sees half a dozen of her collections rank among the 100 most-consumed releases in the nation on the list that blends both sales and streaming activity. While holding onto that many positions is a surefire sign her music is still reaching a massive audience, all of those titles are currently on the decline.

The Tortured Poets Department is Swift’s highest-charting effort this frame, dipping two spots to No. 30. It’s her only top 40 placement in the U.K. at this time. Folklore, Lover, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Midnights, and Reputation also appear on the Official Albums chart, landing at Nos. 59, 62, 70, 79, and 80, respectively. Midnights takes the biggest hit, sliding nine spaces.

While all six of those titles may be on the way down, each has previously conquered the Official Albums Chart. All of them have spent more than a year on the ranking, with The Tortured Poets Department being the newest. That full-length has logged just 56 stays on the list — a number that’s sure to grow, as the project is only slightly more than a year old.

The story of Swift’s performance changes when looking at the Official Country Artists Albums chart. That genre-specific tally includes two of the Grammy winner’s efforts — Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and her self-titled debut. Both projects manage slight upward movement, but neither performs well enough to appear on the all-encompassing ranking of the most-consumed studio albums in the European nation.