2023's best-selling albums: surprisingly, Taylor Swift bested by K-pop. Here's IFPI's Top 20

IFPI, the organization representing the global recording industry, today announced the best-selling album of 2023: it's "FML" by k-pop group SEVENTEEN, which has won the IFPI Global Album Award – the award is calculated based on albums' worldwide performance during the calendar year across physical and digital music formats, from streams to downloads.

Released in April 2023, "FML" was the most pre-ordered album in k-pop history and debuted at number one in South Korea, later reaching number one in Japan and placing in the top five in France and the United States. The group also saw their follow-up album – "Seventeenth Heaven", released in October – reach eighth place on the IFPI Global Album chart.

"FML" was reviewed on our pages and panned with a score of 4, described as an "interlocutory project, a collection put together more out of habit than real necessity" by a group "that has always been self-managed and coordinated through the joint efforts of vocal leader Woozi and producer Bumzu". With an "arena-friendly streak that tries to fill the stadiums the thirteen members have become accustomed to in recent times".

South Korean artists, moreover, took five spots (alongside SEVENTEEN, also Stray Kids and NCT Dream) in the IFPI top ten, representing the best-ever performance for k-pop in the global charts. North American artists took the remaining spots in the top ten, with Taylor Swift – IFPI's Artist of the Year – in particular securing five places in the top twenty, placing two albums in the top ten, with "Midnights" (no. 4) staying in the top five for the second consecutive year and "1989 (Taylor's Version)" in fifth place following its October 2023 release.

Here is the Top 20 Global Album Chart 2023

SEVENTEEN | FML

Stray Kids | 5-Star

Morgan Wallen | One Thing At A Time

Taylor Swift | Midnights

Taylor Swift | 1989 (Taylor's Version)

NCT DREAM | ISTJ

SZA | SOS

Seventeen | Seventeen Heaven

Stray Kids | Rock-star

Travis Scott | Utopia

Taylor Swift | Lover

Taylor Swift | Speak Now (Taylor's Version)

Taylor Swift | folklore

Jung Kook | Golden

The Weeknd | Starboy

Metro Boomin | Heroes & Villains

Bad Bunny | Un Verano Sin Ti

ZeroBaseOne | Youth In The Shade

Miley Cyrus | Endless Summer Vacation

IVE | I've IVE

The IFPI global charts provide an overall picture of the performance of artists, albums and tracks worldwide. Data on streaming, downloads and physical formats, collected in each country directly from participating record labels, is then converted using the IFPI methodology which, developed in collaboration with the federation's member labels, reflects global commercial success by combining sales and streaming results with the economics of each type of consumption at the national level.

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