Taylor Swift is having a great moment right now. While her most recent album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” became the fastest-selling record in its first week of release, the singer-songwriter just became engaged to football player Travis Kelce. This is Taylor’s 12th studio album, and in its first week of release, it sold a record-breaking 4.002 million equivalent album units in the US. This is the largest debut since music sales were first monitored by music data company Luminate in 1991.
Taylor leaves Adele, Jay-Z, and Drake behind
Taylor is smashing records right now. She broke the record previously held by Adele’s 25—which sold 3.378 million copies in its first week in the US in 2015—by making The Life of a Showgirl the fastest-selling album in history.
Additionally, Taylor has 15 No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart, making her the solo artist with the most No. 1 albums. Drake and Jay-Z had previously tied the record with 14 No. 1 albums apiece. The Beatles, who have 19 albums that have reached the top of the charts, are currently her only rival.
Taylor Swift surpasses her own record
Breaking records is nothing new to her, and with The Life of a Showgirl, the history-making started right away. The album broke her own record for the highest first-week sales in a single day when it sold 2.7 million copies in traditional album sales on its first day of release.
Taylor’s last album, The Tortured Poets Department (2024), sold 859,000 vinyl copies in a week, but The Life of a Showgirl broke that record as well. With 1.2 million vinyl copies sold on its first day alone, her new album set a new record for the most vinyl sales in a single week.
Speaking about her record-breaking new album, Taylor told Michigan, “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. 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.”
Eras Tour docuseries
Taylor also revealed on Monday that on December 12, she will launch a concert movie and a six-part documentary series on Disney+ that will follow her historic Eras Tour. She took to X to share the news and wrote, “It was the End of an Era and we knew it. We wanted to remember every moment leading up to the culmination of the most important and intense chapter of our lives, so we allowed filmmakers to capture this tour and all the stories woven throughout it as it wound down. And to film the final show in its entirety. The Eras Tour | The Final Show, featuring the entire Tortured Poets Department set, and the first two episodes of The End of an Era, a 6-episode behind-the-scenes docuseries will be yours December 12th on @DisneyPlus.”
The End of an Era, a six-part documentary series, will also be available on Disney+. A behind-the-scenes look at what Swift referred to as “the most important and intense chapter” of her career will be provided. On December 12, 19, and 26, two-episode batches will be released.