Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl breaks Adele’s first week sales record
Swift’s new album moves past Adele’s 25 with 3.5 million sales in just five days.
Taylor Swift has broken the record for the largest week, by equivalent album units in modern history with The Life Of A Showgirl, Billboard reports.
Billboard and Luminate, which tracks the data, define "the modern era" as starting in 2014, when the Billboard 200 chart began ranking the week’s most popular albums by equivalent album units. That figure is made up of a combination of album purchases, streams of songs from an album, and track purchases. According to Billboard, The Life Of A Showgirl has earned 3.5 million equivalent album units in the five days since its release on October 3.
The previous record was held by the debut week of Adele’s 25, which launched with 3.482 million units in December 2015 chart.
The Life of a Showgirl has already moved 1.2 million vinyl copies, with fans able to buy multiple limited-edition variations of the album via Swift's online store. This is another record broken by Swift. The previous fastest selling vinyl album in history was Swift's last album, 2024's The Tortured Poets Department
The final first-week numbers for the album are expected to be announced by Billboard on Sunday, October 12,