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Here are the biggest albums of 2024 in the UK so far

Over half a million album sales have been logged in the UK in the first half of this year.

By Will Richards

A vinyl record on a player
(Picture: Pexels)

The list of the biggest albums of 2024 in the UK so far has been revealed by the Official Charts Company.

As expected, Taylor Swift‘s The Tortured Poets Department is the biggest-selling album of the first half of the year, topping the list for both streaming and physical sales.

The album racked up sales of 542,200 chart units, with 251,000 physical sales, beating the likes of Noah Kahan’s Stick Season (3) and Olivia Rodrigo‘s GUTS (4).

At Number Two is The Weeknd‘s new Greatest Hits collection, The Highlights.

Another four Swift albums – 1989 (Taylor’s Version) (7), Lover (12), Midnights (14), Folklore (15) and Reputation (18) – all appear in the Top 20 for 2024.

Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift performing at London’s Wembley Stadium on June 21, 2024 (Picture: Aaron Parsons for Rolling Stone UK)

Last month, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour landed in the UK, and was expected to provide a boost of £1billion to the UK economy.

The document, aptly titled ‘Swiftonomics’, also noted that the spending by fans for one ‘Eras Tour’ show is over 12 times the cost of a night out in the United Kingdom – a comparatively meagre £67.

Reviewing Swift’s first Eras Tour show at Wembley, Rolling Stone UK wrote: “No artist alive has the ability to dive so deep into their own lore and pull it off on such a massive scale. With countless easter eggs, a wonderful and warming culture of outfit creation, and stage production on a scale rarely seen, the tour is a cultural behemoth just like Swift. It’s hard to tell yet whether these shows will mark the end of Swift’s imperial, ubiquitous phase, but whether she retreats into the shadows now or not, this will surely go down as the apex of her startling career.”