RS Charts: Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’ Returns to Number One

Taylor Swift’s Folklore spent a seventh non-consecutive week at Number One on the Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums chart. After setting a record for the longest consecutive run at Number One in RS 200 history, Folklore returned to the top after pulling in 84,900 album-equivalent units, driven mostly by sales. Folklore had previously been dethroned by Big Sean’s Detroit 2 and YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s Top

Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon held strong in the Number Two spot. The posthumous release from the Brooklyn rapper has maintained the Number Two position since the third week of August. 

Alicia Keys enjoyed the weeks’ biggest debut, earning the Number Three spot with Alicia. Keys managed to top Swift’s digital and physical sales total, moving 51,700 copies of Alicia. But the album amassed less than 12 million streams.

YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s Top fell to Number Four in its second week on the chart. Juice WRLD’s posthumous album Legends Never Die, a fixture on the upper reaches of the RS 200 since its July release, streamed its way to Number Five — the album earned more streams than Swift’s and Keys’ sets combined. 


Top Albums

The week of September 18, 2020
1

folklore

Taylor Swift

Album Units
84.9K

2

Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon

Pop Smoke


Album Units
71.2K

3

Alicia

Alicia Keys

NEW!
Album Units
62.4K

4

Top

YoungBoy Never Broke Again

Album Units
60.7K

5

Legends Never Die

Juice Wrld

Album Units
49.6K

Popular on Rolling Stone


The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart tracks the most popular releases of the week in the United States. Entries are ranked by album units, a number that combines digital and physical album sales, digital song sales, and audio streams using a custom weighting system. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending with the previous Thursday.

It was a busy week for new releases on the RS 200. Keith Urban’s The Speed of Now Part 1 squeezed by the Hamilton cast-recording to debut at Number Six. Urban also benefited more from sales (27,400) than from streams (12.5 million). In contrast, Code Red, a new collaboration between the Memphis rappers Moneybagg Yo and Blac Youngsta, arrived at Number Eight thanks almost entirely to streams. It was followed closely by Virgo World, the second album from the rising melodic rapper Lil Tecca, which debuted at Number 10. 

Next week, new releases from Machine Gun Kelly, SuperM, and Joji are expected to debut in the Top Ten.

See the full RS 200 here.