American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift's eighth album "Folklore," released on July 24, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's 200 albums chart this week, marking the best first-week sales of the year and giving the pop star her seventh No. 1 title on the chart.

According to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, the album sold 846,000 equivalent albums in the U.S. based on a combination of sales and streams.

The success makes Swift, 30, the first artist to have seven different albums sell at least 500,000 albums in a single week.

With 289.85 million on-demand streams of its 16 songs, "folklore" also marks the largest streaming week for an album by a female act this year. 

According to Billboard, Swift rewrites the mark for the most simultaneous appearances on Billboard's Streaming Songs by a woman since the survey's 2013 inception, breaks the record for most songs simultaneously within Streaming Songs' top 10 by a woman, and takes the mark for most Streaming Songs leaders by a woman and ties for the second-most No. 1s all time only after Drake.

Working with alternative artist Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner, guitarist with indie rock band The National, "Folklore" arrived with just 24 hours advance notice.

Produced entirely during the coronavirus crisis, the album comes less than a year after her 2019 album "Lover."

Swift said that while in isolation because of the coronavirus pandemic "my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory."

"Folklore" was only released digitally, but will be available as a CD on August 7.

(With input from AP and Reuters)