With more than 1.5 billion streams and a record-breaking first week, Taylor Swift’s new album redefines what “massive” means in modern music.
Taylor Swift just made history again. Her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, has scored the biggest first week of any album ever — more than 4 million in the U.S. and 5.5 million globally.
The record instantly topped the Billboard 200, giving Swift her 15th No. 1 album and another entry in a long line of milestones. Across platforms, The Life of a Showgirl pulled in over 1.5 billion streams, setting the pace for 2025 and reinforcing Swift’s unmatched run in the modern music era.
“I’ll never forget how excited I was in 2006 when my first album sold 40,000 copies in its first week,” Swift said. “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 theaters, 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.”
Swift’s latest release shattered vinyl sales records with more than one million units sold — the first album in history to do so. It also broke Spotify’s all-time debut benchmarks, with “The Fate of Ophelia” becoming the fastest track to cross 100 million streams. On top of that, The Life of a Showgirl achieved No. 1 status in more than 18 countries, from the U.K. and Australia to Germany, France, and Canada.
With every album, Taylor Swift finds a new ceiling — and then smashes right through it.
