American pop star Taylor Swift has ended Kanye West’s long-standing streak at the top of the Billboard charts with her album The Tortured Poets Department.
Swift’s album has claimed the No. 1 spot with 142,000 equivalent album units, while Kanye’s latest release, Vultures 2, fell short of the top position with 107,000 equivalent album units, according to US media reports.
The Tortured Poets Department has become the first album since Morgan Wallen’s One Thing at a Time to hold the No. 1 spot for at least 14 weeks. This marks the 13th time Kanye West’s album has reached No. 2 on the charts. West teamed up with Lil Wayne, Don Toliver, Kodak Black, Future, and Playboi Carti for Vultures 2, which had been slated for release earlier this year.
It is also worth noting that Taylor Swift and Kanye West have a long-standing feud that began in 2009 when West interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to assert that Beyoncé deserved the award instead.
Although Taylor Swift and Kanye West eventually reconciled, their relationship was strained again by West’s song “Famous.” In the track, West asserted his role in Swift’s rise to fame with the line, “I made that bitch famous.”
In response to the backlash, West and his then-wife Kim Kardashian released a recorded conversation with Swift that they claimed showed her approval of the lyric.
However, a subsequent version of the conversation appeared online, challenging the accuracy of their claims and refuting that Swift had given her consent.
Earlier this month, Taylor Swift’s three concerts in Vienna were canceled after the government revealed a planned attack on the stadium, according to the event organizer. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer stated that a “tragedy was prevented.”
Nehammer explained in a post on the social media platform X, “Thanks to the close collaboration between our police and the newly established DSN with international agencies, the threat was identified early, addressed, and a tragedy was averted.” The DSN refers to Austria’s Directorate for Security and Intelligence.
