Since Friday, the music, cultural, and media universe has revolved solely around the figure of Taylor Swift. When The Life of a Showgirl was available on streaming platforms, her fans - and even those who are not as much - rushed to listen to the new 12 songs from the pop queen. When physical copies started arriving at homes and stores, the same happened with the sales of its multiple vinyl editions. And as soon as the album's making-off was in cinemas, the result was identical.
It's not just the feeling that each new project of Taylor Swift generates a wave of anticipation and specialized criticism, it's that the data shows that the phenomenon is uncontrollable. Throughout the weekend, the top 12 spots on Spotify and Apple's global charts have been dominated by the American's album. The Life of a Showgirl was the biggest debut of an album on Spotify in 2025, multiplying by five those of Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, or The Weeknd, with its 249.9 million streams in just one day. This has made it the second biggest debut in the platform's history. Ahead, once again, is she with The Tortured Poets Department, which reached 314 million with four more songs (16) than the current one. The third and fourth spots are also hers with Midnights (185 million) and 1989 Taylor's Version (176 million).
Although the album's reception has been mixed with The Guardian, Pitchfork, or Billboard being critical of the project, its commercial performance has not suffered. At a time when physical format sales have plummeted, Taylor Swift remains one of the few artists capable of sustaining figures exceeding one million copies. According to Nielsen's data, the American is the only artist who has managed to debut above that threshold with eight of her albums. The Life of a Showgirl reached 2.7 million in traditional sales in the United States on its first day alone, including physical and digital sales. What does that mean? That in just 24 hours - although pre-orders are included - the singer has already marked her best week in history in this field and is only 600,000 copies away from the 3.3 million that Adele's 25 reached in 2015, setting the week with the highest sales since 1991 that Luminate collects this data.
That distance has also been shortened over the weekend when The Life of a Showgirl already surpassed three million copies sold, being the fastest album to do so. Taylor Swift still has five days ahead to break a new record in the music industry.
The different vinyl editions that the artist has released on the market are also setting sales records with data collected since 1991. She sold 1.2 million copies on her first day, breaking a record she had already set herself. In 2024, with The Tortured Poets Department, she had reached 859,000 in her first week, in 24 hours she had already surpassed that figure by more than 300,000
And the icing on the cake of the opening day still had to be put by the pop queen with the arrival of Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, a documentary about what was behind the recording of her latest album that was only available in theaters for the three days of the weekend. According to Box Office records, its first day in the United States grossed 15.8 million dollars - about 13.5 million euros - multiplying by five the second movie in the ranking, Paul Thomas's A Battle After Another, and by almost seven times the debut of The Smashing Machine, starring Dwayne Johnson The Rock. Box Office's forecasts suggest that only in the U.S., the film's premiere will earn between 25 and 30 million during the weekend.
Taylor Swift's twelfth studio album thus reinforces the American's figure as one of the great cultural artifacts of our time just a few months after the end of her historic Eras Tour. The tour, which had 149 dates worldwide over almost two years, was the first to exceed 2 billion dollars in revenue in history with over 10 million spectators. And many of them still want more.