At 72, Cher achieves major 2018 music milestone for a woman

Mamma Mia! Cher's new album of ABBA covers, "Dancing Queen," has debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart.

But that's not all. The icon, 72, tied the record for her highest-charting solo album ever and it also scored the biggest sales week of the year for any pop album by a woman, according to Billboard.

"Dancing Queen" sold 153,000 units but amazingly enough, 150,000 of those were actual album sales.

That makes it the best-selling actual album of the week. The No. 1 album, "Tha Carter V" by Lil Wayne, sold more overall units but most of those came from adding up millions of streams of individual songs.

In addition, the 150,000 albums sold makes it Cher's biggest sales week of the Nielsen Music era, which started in 1991.

This top 3 debut matches the position of Cher's previous album, 2013's "Closer to the Truth."

On top of that, no pop album by a woman has sold more in a week in 2018 than "Dancing Queen." Taylor Swift's "Reputation" was the last pop release by a female artist to sell more and that was back in December of 2017.

The only pop album by any artist that sold more than "Dancing Queen" in 2018 was Justin Timberlake's "Man of the Woods," which moved 242,000 units its first week of release in February.

Billboard notes that one reason Cher's album had such great sales is because it was part of a promotion that included a ticket to her upcoming U.S. tour. The "Here We Go Again" tour launches in North America on Jan. 17 in Florida.