Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, has officially sold four million equivalent album units — which includes album sales and streaming activity — in its first week in the U.S.
That is the biggest first week in modern music history according to Luminate, the industry data and analytics company that began tracking sales in 1991.
Swift broke the record set by Adele’s 25, which sold 3.378 million copies in its first week in 2015 in the U.S.
The Life of a Showgirl was released Oct. 3. In its first week, pure album sales totaled 3,479,500 copies.
She’s also become the solo artist with the most No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, with 15. She was previously tied with Drake and Jay-Z, who each have 14.
Swift is now just behind the Beatles, who hold 19 No. 1 albums.
Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, is her hotly anticipated follow-up to last year’s The Tortured Poets Department and her absurdly successful Eras concert tour. CBC’s Griffin Jaeger reviews Swift’s latest project.
She is no stranger to breaking records, and when it comes to The Life of a Showgirl, the history-making started immediately. In its first day of release, the album sold 2.7 million copies in traditional album sales, breaking her record for most first-week sales in one day.
Her last album, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, amassed 2.61 million equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week.
Vinyl variants move the needle
One of the reasons Swift has seen so much success is that she released her record in several different variants.
Those include multiple editions specific to Target — three CDs titled It’s Frightening, It’s Rapturous and It’s Beautiful, as well as an exclusive vinyl release, The Crowd Is Your King.
There are a number of other vinyl variants as well: The Tiny Bubble in Champagne Collection, The Baby That’s Show Business Collection, The Shiny Bug Collection and the standard LP and cassette, in “sweat and vanilla perfume Portofino orange vinyl.”
According to Luminate, The Life of a Showgirl broke the record for the most copies of a vinyl album sold in a single week in the U.S., with 1.2 million copies in its first day. The previous record holder was The Tortured Poets Department, which sold 859,000 copies on vinyl in its first week.
Total Billboard domination (again)
Every song from The Life of a Showgirl debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 — taking the top 12 spots on the chart dated Oct. 18.
The Fate of Ophelia is her 13th No. 1 on the chart.
This is the third time in her career that Swift has held the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. She is the only artist ever to do so, having first achieved it with her 2022 album Midnights, and soon after repeated it with 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department.
However, this marks the first time any album has placed all of its songs uninterrupted from the top of the chart-down.
New Disney+ projects will keep Swift at the top
The news of Swift’s record-breaking sales arrived just after Good Morning America revealed Monday that she’ll have two new projects at Disney+. That’s a six-episode, behind-the-scenes docuseries about her landmark Eras Tour titled Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The End of an Era.
The first two episodes of her docuseries will premiere Dec. 12.
And that is not to be confused with the second, titled Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The Final Show, a concert film now with the inclusion of The Tortured Poets Department section. The album was incorporated into her three-and-a-half-hour performance following its release. It was filmed in Vancouver.
That differs from the 2023 concert film Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which was compiled from several shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles, and arrived ahead of The Tortured Poets Department.
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