ARIA Charts: Taylor Swift occupies the entire Top 10… and over half of the Top 50
Taylor Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, has taken over the entire ARIA Top 10 Singles Chart, and 28 spots in the Top 50. This madness needs to end.
As the below chart neatly illustrates, the ARIA Singles Chart becomes completely worthless when a blockbuster album is released.
New Taylor Swift songs occupy the entire top 10, with another six taking up the remainder of the 20.
Last week’s #1, #2, and #3 now sit at #11, #12, and #13, respectively, while the rest of the double-album (well, 28 of the 31 songs) make up the Top 50, with the odd song by another artist popping through the Taylor haze every now and then.
Even Taylor’s older catalogue didn’t cut it this week, with just one of her songs released prior to last Friday — last week’s #9 Cruel Summer — remaining on the chart, dropping to #38.
Fun fact: Back in March 2017, I wrote about this problem, when Ed Sheeran landed his entire 16-song Divide album into the ARIA Singles charts and it seemed like it may just mess with the integrity of the Singles charts. Things have gotten a lot worse since.
The obvious solution: a limit of three songs in the ARIA Singles Chart at any one time. It is meant to represent the success of a single, not the result of an overstuffed album being listened to a lot the week of release. This should be represented with a #1 album, not a raid on the singles chart.
Look at how silly that thing looks down there.
Guess what the number one album is this week?
Correct! It’s Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, which probably sold more copies in Australia than there are people on Earth because of all the vinyl variants, and is still only one of ten Taylor Swift albums currently in the Australia ARIA Albums Charts. That’s 20% Taylor.
Not even the still-buying-CDs-army of Pearl Jam-loving dads were enough to topple a double Taylor Swift album.
However, the Seattle band’s twelve album Dark Matter debuted at #2 — quite a good result, considering #3 SZA is in the country at the moment, and #4 Beyonce’s album is still hanging around after four weeks – maybe Cowgirl Beyonce is a grower? — and #5 is Taylor again.
The next highest new release is way down at #32, and it’s a new Brice Springsteen best of (which means a lot of boxes of these are currently sitting unopened in various JB Hi-Fis, waiting to be shipped back in a few years).
The only other new release to chart was Mark Seymour’s eleventh solo album The Boxer, which entered at #41 — the pleasing result of actual fans actually buying actual non-bubblegum-coloured records. It can still happen.
ARIA Albums Top 50 Chart April 29
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Nathan Jolly is the Deputy Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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Just say you don’t like Taylor Swift. Wanting to change the entire system because one person achieved too highly is akin to “everyone gets a ribbon” in primary school.
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A few weeks ago I asked ARIA this question. I still have not got a response.
ARIA is rigged. It’s the chart equivalent of drugs in sport.
“Just wondering what the P indicates these days next to a song or album in the ARIA charts? It used to be for “Platinum” sales before the streaming era.
For instance, this week Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” debuts at #37 and is marked “P”. Similarly her song “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” lands at #42 in its second week after dropping 10 places, yet is also marked “P”.
Surely this can’t mean Platinum any more.
There are so many artists whose songs and albums have charted longer and higher who don’t get such accreditation.
Can you explain the accreditation please ARIA”
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