Taylor Swift gets the last laugh in Kanye West feud as she breaks his Billboard number one album streak … amid yearslong feud stemming from infamous MTV incident
Kanye West’s streak of 11 number one albums has come to an end, as his album Vultures 2 featuring Ty Dolla Sign debuted at number two, surpassed by Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.
The latest release from Swift, 34, ended a long streak for West, 47, TMZ reported on Sunday.
West, whose career has declined since the fall of 2022 amid a flood of anti-Semitic remarks, sold an estimated 107,000 equivalent album units in its first week, Billboard reported on Sunday.
It was West’s 13th song to reach one of the top two spots on the chart in his career, Billboard reported.
Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department topped the chart this week with sales of 142,000 album equivalent units in the U.S. for the week ending Aug. 8, Luminate reported.
Kanye West’s streak of 11 No. 1 albums has come to an end, as his album Vultures 2 featuring Ty Dolla Sign debuted in second place – after being surpassed by Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department
The album has spent 14 weeks at the top spot since its release last April. Before Swift, Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time had spent 19 weeks (non-consecutive) in a span from March 2023 to March 2024.
The last female artist to achieve this feat was with Adele’s hit album 21, which spent a whopping 24 non-consecutive weeks at number one between 2011 and 2012.
The Tortured Poets Department was the week’s best-selling album, with only Wallen’s One Thing at a Time holding the top spot on the Top Streaming Albums chart.
According to Billboard, Swift’s album sales were boosted by several promotional efforts, including a series of five digital album variations that Swift sold online for a short time.
The variations include all 16 songs from the album plus some bonus tracks, available for $4.99 each.
The songs include a “first draft phone memo” for Swift’s My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys and four live numbers from The Eras Tour.
Swift’s online store also sold three digital versions of exclusive songs and a signed CD edition. There was also a sale.
This week marked Swiftâs 83rd career peak atop the Billboard 200, the most in history, with the late Elvis Presley in second place among solo artists with 67 total weeks. Swift and Jay-Z share the most number-one albums on the chart with 14 apiece.
West’s Vultures 2 album was his 13th to chart in the top two spots of his career, Billboard reported. Pictured in Italy earlier this year
Swift’s album has spent 14 weeks at the top of the charts since its release last April. Pictured in France in May
West referenced Swift and her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, on his new album in the song Lifestyle (Demo), with the lyric, “I twist my Taylor spliffs tight at the end like Travis Kelce.”
Kelce’s father, Ed Kelce, posted an article about the song on his Facebook page at DailyMail.com, writing: “Mental illness is rampant.”
This professional achievement is the result of almost 15 years of enmity between the artists. The foundation for the feud was laid during the MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, 2009 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
During the infamous exchange, West infamously interrupted Swift during her victory speech for the Best Female Video Award for You Belong With Me, which was nominated over BeyoncĂ©’s Single Ladies.
West came onstage and took the mic from Swift, saying to her, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time.”
Although the musical stars appeared to be on better terms in the years that followed – they were photographed together at a number of events in the years that followed – things went sour after the release of West’s song Famous in 2016.
West claimed at the time that Swift had given him her blessing to call her a “B****” in the song’s lyrics, in a reference to the VMAs incident. Swift said she never made any such agreement, which led to a public feud with West after he and ex-wife Kim Kardashian released a July 2016 phone call West and Swift had about the content of the Famous song.
Kardashian referred to Swift as a snake when the phone call was released. She tweeted, “Wait, it’s actually National Snake Day?!?!? They have holidays for everyone, I mean everything, these days!”
The seeds of the disagreement between West and Swift were planted during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on September 13, 2009 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City
In the infamous exchange, West infamously interrupted Swift during her acceptance speech for the Best Female Video Award for You Belong With Me, which was nominated against BeyoncĂ©’s Single Ladies
Swift spoke to in 2019 Fashion about how she handled the high-profile scandal, saying she put her energy into her material.
âA mass public shaming, with millions of people saying youâre canceled, is a very isolating experience,â she said of the difficult time. âWhen you say someoneâs canceled, itâs not a TV show. Itâs a human being.
‘You send masses of messages to this person telling him or her to shut up, to disappear or it could also be interpreted as: ‘End yourself.”
She spoke candidly about the creative process following the scandal, which reportedly inspired the songs This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things and Look What You Made Me Do.
“I knew right away that I had to make music about it because I knew that was the only way I could survive it,” Swift told the outlet. “It was the only way I could maintain my sanity and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so degrading.”