Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” may well go down in the lore of 2020 as the album with the biggest debut of the year. Although there are still five months to go, “Folklore” scorched any competition that has appeared so far this year, with album units of 852,700 pushing it to No. 1 on the Rolling Stone album chart. That is easily the biggest number for any new release since Swift’s own “Lover,” which debuted with 991,800 album units 11 months ago. The breakdown in Swift’s numbers was 627,400 in full album sales, augmented by 86,600 individual track sales and 259.4 million song streams. The previous record holder for the top premiere of 2020 was Juice WRLD’s posthumous “Legends Never Die” release, which debuted with 517,800 album units two weeks ago and stayed at the pinnacle again last week with 162,800. This week Juice WRLD drops to No. 4 with 94,000. Swift’s smashing debut is more impressive for the facts that the singer did not announce the album’s release until less than 24 hours before its bow, and that it had no retail sales outside of downloads and advance CD and LP sales handled through her own web store, although it was widely available for streaming. Physical copies of the CD go on sale in brick-and-mortar stores this Friday. First-week sales were no doubt boosted by her web store making eight different limited editions of the CD and vinyl exclusively available for one week only. Swift also had eight of the top 10 songs on the Rolling Stone songs chart and 15 out of the top 20. Logic came in at No. 2 with 229,900 album units for “No Pressure,” which he has promised or threatened will be his swan song before retiring. (SD-Agencies) | 