Taylor Swift has made history by setting a record by staying at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart for 12 consecutive weeks with ‘The Tortured Poets Department’. This is the singer’s longest-running number one album of all time.

It is also the first album by a female artist to spend 12 consecutive weeks at No. 1, surpassing Whitney Houston ‘s 11-week run with The Bodyguard soundtrack . Commentators say Swift is trying to surpass Carole King’s 15-week run with her iconic 1971 album Tapestry .

Sales of The Tortured Poets Department increased 43% this week to 163,000 album units. That increase was fueled by the singer adding several album variants to her digital store, as well as releasing three additional digital variants that include exclusive bonus tracks.

Taylor Swift performs songs from The Tortured Poets Department album as part of The Eras Tour

This “robbed” country singer Zach Bryan of the No. 1 spot with his new album The Great American Bar Scene , which sold 137,000 albums. Previously, a series of artists were also “pushed” to No. 2 by Taylor by releasing new versions, including Billie Eilish ( Hit me hard and soft ), Gunna ( One of Wun ), Dua Lipa ( Radical Optimism ) and Gracie Abrams ( The secret of us ).

The news has also led to accusations that Taylor has been working behind the scenes to stop rivals from threatening her. Most recently, she was also said to have taken action to prevent Charli XCX’s album Brat from taking the top spot on the UK album charts.

Brat was predicted to debut at number one on the UK charts, taking the top spot from Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department after five weeks at the top. However , mid-charting week, Taylor surprised fans by releasing several versions of the album exclusively in the UK – sending sales soaring and overtaking Charli. Curiously, the new versions were only available temporarily and were removed by the end of the charting week.

Many analysts said: “I understand when an album is released, there are plans that have been scheduled. But these variants are not the global version. They are created to target a specific customer base in the UK, which surely means it is related to the charts.”

To date, Taylor Swift has yet to release a physical version of her double album The Tortured Poets Department: The Antology, and many believe that the aforementioned version is the “last shot” if any artist can threaten the Blank Space singer’s path to 15 consecutive weeks on the chart .