Taylor Swift might be spending another week at No. 1 on the album chart soon. But if so, it won’t be with her blockbuster studio album from last year, “The Tortured Poets Department.” Rather, it would be “Lover (Live From Paris),” a new vinyl version of which the singer put up for sale in her webstore Tuesday morning, resulting in a near-instant sellout.
Fans exulted when a notice went out via social media and email that a new pressing of the extremely rare album was being made available until this Friday night at midnight, “or while supplies last.” Not everyone got to partake in the joy, though — did only did supplies not last for three-and-a-half days, they were depleted in less than an hour.
Even with the release selling out before most fans even knew it went on sale, it could still have a shot at No. 1, if Swift sleuths are correct in believing that somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 copies went on sale and immediately sold through in the U.S. That could make it the top album for the week, or at the very least a contender for the top 5, even without any streaming support or additional sales. (The current chart-topper, SZA’s deluxe album, made it to No. 1 with 130,000 album equivalent units, with the next closest contender far behind at 70,000.)
Swift’s camp has not released any information about how many copies were pressed, or whether the album might be restocked during the three-day window or if it’s really all gone. Some fans believe they were able to get a glimpse of remaining inventory in different parts of the world and saw that number rapidly diminishing before the “not available” sign went up.
“Lover (Live From Paris)” had previously reached a peak of No. 58 on the Billboard 200 chart, based on it selling a grand total of 13,000 copies on vinyl — per Luminate — upon its very, very limited release in February 2023. It was on sale for such a brief window that most Swifties aren’t even aware of its existence, and those who are have coveted it as her rarest official vinyl release, regularly selling for over $1,000 when it turns up on eBay.
This new pressing will probably make that previous one a bit less valuable… although the older one will hold some value because of being pressed in different colors. But even the edition released Tuesday may come to be seen as a collectors’ item, as some people who snapped it up immediately began reselling it on eBay for $100 and up.
“Lover (Live From Paris)” is a two-record set on heart-shaped, colored vinyl that contains eight versions of songs from her “Lover” studio album, recorded in Paris in 2019 and first released digitally in 2020 in conjunction with an ABC television concert special. The tracks were released individually but are not available as a full digital album on most music services, let alone on CD, making the vinyl iteration even more of a fetish item.
Swift fans who were successful in buying “Lover (Live From Paris)” during the brief window of opportunity Tuesday morning were told that it will begin shipping on Jan. 20, which is presumably the time at which sales officially count and Luminate will get a tally, potentially impacting the album chart in the last week of the month.
Fans posted images to show how the colors in the extremely rare 2023 release compare with the apparently-still-pretty-rare 2024 version:
