Taylor Swift's '1989' Is Again at the Top of the Charts, Now Ties Elvis Presley's Solo Artist Record

Taylor Swift is not done with 2023. Her re-recorded1989 (Taylor's Version) is once again at the top of the Billboard 200. With this, she now ties Elvis Presley for the most weeks spent at No. 1 on the album chart, with a total of 67 weeks.

All bets are on that if Swift continues her hold on the No. 1 spot, she'll surpass Presley and truly be flying solo, though Presley can still claim his title in the "male solo" category. Sales of the 14 new vinyl versions of 1989 were the driving force in the uptick, with a boost surely coming from the holiday gift-giving season.

Presley had nine Billboard No. 1 albums: Elvis Presley (1956), Elvis (1956), Loving You (1957), Elvis Christmas Album (1957), GI Blues (1960), Something For Everybody (1961), Blue Hawaii (1961), Roustabout (1964), and Elvis - Aloha From Hawaii (1973). The last album was a live recording from the Honolulu International Center on January 14, 1973 and was beamed via satellite to audiences in Asia and Oceania, with a time delay in Europe. It was shown as a concert special in the US in April.

Both Swift and Presley are still far behind the artists with the most cumulative weeks at No 1: The Beatles have spent 132 weeks in the top album position from 1963 to the present. The ongoing debate as to whether Swift has a chance in her lifetime to equal or surpass that total can swing wildly from "yes" to "no." She could conceivably continue to release new material (including the unavoidable "Taylor's Version" of 2017's Reputation and her self-titled 2006 debut) until the end of time. However, as the music industry makes advances in the legacy/master tapes issue — the reason behind Swift re-recording her back catalog when her former label Big Machine Records was sold to Ithaca Holdings, owned by music manager Scooter Braun, who then refused to let Swift buy/own said masters — that could make it really tough for this exact scenario to keep happening.

Interestingly, both Taylor and Presley's output contains duplicate versions of the artists' earlier material. While Swift is famously in the process of re-recording her earlier albums that were previously released (and previously charted), Presley's post-1977 output also consisted in large part of old material re-packaged and glossed up, as well as the aforementioned live album. Even a figure as iconic as Presley suffered in the popularity department as his career progressed, with his last hit single, "Suspicious Minds," coming in August 1969.

Of course, Presley continued to make chart waves with "new" music long after his death. In 2002, Dutch musician Tom Holkenborg, better known as JXL, was given permission from the estate to remix Presley's 1968 single "A Little Less Conversation." Keeping Presley's original vocal and instrumentation and presenting with a funk drum beat, the single, credited to ELVIS VS JXL, went to No. 1 in 20 countries.