Taylor Swift just smashed Adele’s first-week sales record with her album The Life of a Showgirl, according to Billboard.
A huge wave of fans rushed to buy and stream Showgirl as soon as it dropped on October 3, and by now, it’s already at 3.5 million equivalent units—beating 25 by about 20,000 in the same time frame, based on early numbers from Luminate. Even though Adele still has the crown for most actual albums sold (that’s just physical and digital copies, not streams), with 25 at 3.378 million and Showgirl just behind at 3.2 million, Taylor isn’t done selling yet because there’s still two days left in the first week.
What’s really wild is that The Life of a Showgirl sold 1.2 million vinyl records, blowing past the previous vinyl record set by The Tortured Poets Department with 859,000. The way they count these sales is a bit of a math puzzle—streaming numbers (which are about 300,000 units this time) get added to regular sales to make up the “equivalent units.” Taylor’s team also dropped a bunch of special versions on her webstore, so superfans could grab more than one copy, which probably helped boost the numbers. The final tally is coming out Sunday.
Fans think it’s exciting to watch records like this get broken.
If you want to read more, check out the track reviews for “Actually Romantic” and “Father Figure.” Sometimes, it feels like everyone is just waiting to see what Taylor will do next.
