With the headlines she’s making, it’s no surprise that Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, has made music history. It had already débuted at number one on the Billboard 200. It is now the biggest first week for any album, with over 4 million US and over 5·5 million non-US sales, and the number-one album worldwide.
Over 1·5 milliard global streams have been made for the largest début of 2025.
Swift said, ‘I’ll never forget how excited I was in 2006 when my first album sold 40,000 copies in its first week. I was 16 and couldn’t even fathom that that many people would care enough about my music to invest their time and energy into it.
‘Since then I’ve tried to meet and thank as many people as I could who have given me the chance to chase this insane dream. Here we are all these years later and a hundred times that many people showed up for me this week. I have 4 million thank-yous I want to send to the fans, and 4 million reasons to feel even more proud of this album than I already was. Thank you for going out to celebrate this project in the movie theatres, investing in vinyl, streaming, watching the video, buying CDs, reading the poems I wrote inside the packaging, and immersing yourselves in The Life of a Showgirl. I’ll cherish this feeling forever.’
The Life of a Showgirl is Swift’s 15th number-one album, breaking the record for the most number-one albums in the 21st century. She has set the record for the most number-one albums by a solo artist. It continues her streak of 11 consecutive studio albums débuting at number-one, beginning with Fearless in 2008. With the album’s release, Swift reaches her 87th week at number one on the Billboard 200, which is the record this side of the 21st century, and the most weeks at number one by a solo artist or a female artist in history.
This is the first album in history with all its songs appearing uninterrupted from positions 1 through 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. ‘The Fate of Ophelia’ is her 13th number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100.
The vinyl version of the album earned the largest sales’ week in Nielsen history, surpassing 1 million units sold, the first album to achieve this milestone.
In addition, the album has been critically acclaimed internationally.
You may also like
