Taylor Swift scores 15th US Number One album with record-breaking sales: “I’ll cherish this feeling forever – just wow”

Taylor Swift has achieved her 15th US Number One album with ‘The Life Of A Showgirl‘.

• READ MORE: Taylor Swift – ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’ review: magical when the songwriter just lets herself be

The musician currently occupies all Top 12 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, while the album is Number One in the Billboard 200 albums chart – marking her 15th time reaching the milestone.

It comes as the album sets a new record for first-week sales with just over 4 million equivalent album units, breaking Adele’s long-held streaming-era record.

The album debuted with 4.002million equivalent album units (which include pure album sales and streaming activity) earned in the United States, following its release on October 3.

Within that figure, pure album sales total 3,479,500. In total, The Life Of A Showgirl registered 5.5m global album-equivalent units in its opening week, per Music Week, and has amassed more than 1.5billion global streams, securing the largest debut of 2025.

On Instagram, Swift reflected on the milestone in a post that looked back on the release of her self-titled debut album, released nearly two decades ago. “I’ll never forget how excited I was in 2006 when my first album sold 40,000 copies in its first week,” Swift wrote. “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.”

She continued: “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 you’s I want to send to the fans, and 4 million reasons to feel even more proud of this album than I already was.”

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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.

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.”

‘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.

In other news, yesterday (October 13), Swift announced a new six-part docuseries charting her record-breaking ‘Eras Tour’.

The post Taylor Swift scores 15th US Number One album with record-breaking sales: “I’ll cherish this feeling forever – just wow” appeared first on NME.