Taylor Swift breaks Adele’s streaming-era record with new album ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’

Taylor Swift has broken Adele’s streaming-era record with her new album release, chart figures have revealed.

Swift released her 12th studio album ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’ on Friday (October 3), the follow-up to last year’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’.

Ahead of its release, the album already broke records. As per Rolling Stone, the project surpassed five million pre-saves on Spotify – something that eclipsed the record Swift previously held with her 2024 full-length effort. It is the first album to reach this figure in Spotify history.

Now, it’s been revealed that ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’ has earned 3.5million album units in the US alone, as per Billboard. Of this total, traditional album sales (physical and digital purchases), equal 3.2million copies, while the remaining 300,000 relate to streaming.

This now surpasses the record previously set by Adele in the opening week of ‘25’ when it debuted with 3.378million copies sold in 2015. Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ has now secured a new record for the largest week, by equivalent album units, for an album, since the Billboard chart began ranking the most popular albums by equivalent units in 2014.

Meanwhile, Swift has addressed the criticism she’s received for her latest album after fans have been vocal about their thoughts on the album – with some calling it “her best album” and the return of “pop perfection”, and others declaring it “the worst Taylor Swift album yet” and “boring and basic”.

In a new chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Swift has addressed the criticism she’s received for the album. “I welcome the chaos,” she began. “The rule of show business is if it’s the first week of my album release, and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping.”

She continued: “I have a lot of respect for people’s subjective opinions on art – I’m not the art police. Everybody is allowed to feel exactly how they want and what our goal is as entertainers is to be a mirror. Oftentimes an album is a really, really wild way to look at yourself – what you’re going through in your life is gonna affect whether you relate to the music I’m putting out at any given moment.”

“What I often love seeing my fans say is ‘I used to be someone who didn’t like relate to Reputation, and now that I’ve been through some other things in my life, that’s my favourite album.’ Or ‘I used to be a Fearless girlie, now I’m obsessed with Evermore.’ I’m playing for keeps. I have such an eye on legacy when I’m making my music – I know what I made, I know I adore it. I know that on the theme of what the ‘Showgirl’ is, all of this is part of it,” she concluded.

Elsewhere, the singer has ruled out touring off the back of her record-breaking Eras tour, adding: “I’m gonna be really honest with you. I am so tired, like when I think about doing it again. Because I would want to do it really well again, you know?”

NME gave ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’ three stars, writing: “To seek escapism is not a sin, but the best pop music makes the personal feel like life or death. ‘Speak Now’, ‘Reputation’, ‘Folklore’: her greatest works could be genuinely transformative. For the first time, ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’ sees Swift not catalysed into artistic growth by love, but merely comfortably secured by it.”