Taylor Swift’s divisive new album, The Life of a Showgirl, has beaten Adele’s record-breaking 25 in first week sales numbers.
According to the data tracking firm Luminate, the album has already sold 3.5m units in the US which equates to 3.2m physical copies and 300,000 attributed to streaming activity. Adele achieved 3.482m in 2015 with her opening week sales of 25 which was led by the hit Hello.
Adele’s numbers were a modern-era record at the time for Luminate, which started electronically tracking album sales in 1991.
There are still two more days to go, which should see the number rise even higher, although 2.7m albums were sold on the first day alone. The album has been released in over 25 different iterations with various special editions.
Her last album The Tortured Poets Department sold 2.51m units in the first week.
The success comes after Swift’s accompanying 89-minute theatrical release hit number one at the US box office. Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl made $34m in its opening weekend. In a two-star review, the Guardian’s Adrian Horton called it a “lazy” cash-in.
Reviews for The Life of a Showgirl have been mixed with the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis calling it “nowhere near as good as it should be given Swift’s talents”.
This week, Swift spoke about fan reactions to the album in an interview with Zane Lowe. “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 said. “And art, I have a lot of respect for people’s subjective opinions on art. I’m not the art police. It’s like everybody is allowed to feel exactly how they want. And what our goal is as entertainers is to be a mirror.”
The 35-year-old has also addressed rumours that she had turned down next year’s Super Bowl, which is now set to star Bad Bunny. Swift said there had been “no official offer” on the table.
Swift is expected to begin production on her feature-length directorial debut movie, which had been announced back in 2022 with Searchlight Pictures attached. Recent reports have also suggested that the screenplay would receive a rewrite by the Normal People and Lady Macbeth writer Alice Birch.
The star also announced her engagement to Travis Kelce, an NFL player, in August.
