Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, is officially the UK’s fastest-selling release of 2025, having notched up 304,000 sales since Friday. The sum eclipses the first-week sales of her last two studio albums: The Tortured Poets Departed (270,000 copies in 2024) and Midnights (204,000 in 2022). With only three days of sales, she has already racked up the UK’s biggest first-week sales since Ed Sheeran’s Divide sold 672,000 copies in 2017.
The star is also on course for the year’s biggest-selling album overall. The reigning queen is Sabrina Carpenter, who sings on the title track Life of a Showgirl. Her album Short N’ Sweet moved 444,000 units as of January. Taylor Swift has also smashed records in the US, where she achieved 2.7 million sales on Friday alone.
That is Swift’s biggest sales week ever — and the second-largest for any album since 1991, when modern chart methodology began. Only Adele’s 25 has done better: It sold 3.378 million copies in its first week in 2015.
The Life of a Showgirl has also broken the US record for vinyl albums purchased in one week. And there was definitely some nostalgia involved when Swifties purchased a whopping 1.2 million copies on wax — in no small part because the star put out eight collectable variants of the record.
Taylor Swift also set the previous single-week record, when her last album, The Tortured Poets Department, moved 859,000 vinyl copies during its debut week. Swift’s sales are particularly impressive because album sales elsewhere in the industry continue to decline.
In the UK, only one other album this year has racked up more than 100,000 in opening week sales – Sam Fender’s People Watching. This month’s “Play,” the latest from Ed Sheeran, moved 67,000 units when it was released last month.
There were two weeks this summer when albums (Reneé Rapp’s Bite Me and the Oasis compilation Time Flies) that sold less than 20,000 copies made it to No. 1. Never one to be satisfied with mere chart supremacy, Taylor Swift also managed to be the No.1 movie at the cinematic box office this weekend (taking $46m (£34) in ticket sales) for her 89-minute movie Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party Of A Showgirl.
Serving as a de facto album listening party, the screenings featured the debut of her music video for The Fate Of Ophelia, in addition to behind-the-scenes footage from the studio and commentary on each of Swift’s songs.
Mixed reviews
According to the mid-breaker survey, Taylor Swift’s 12th album was written and recorded during stolen moments while on the European leg of her Eras Tour last summer. It charts the star’s descent into falling for American Footballer Travis Kelce; intermixed with cautionary – and occasionally catty – tales of the music industry.
Critical reviews have been mixed. Variety described it as “contagiously joyful,” with the Financial Times deeming its sparkle lacking. The star confirmed the news during an interview on BBC Radio 2’s Breakfast Show with Scott Mills, where she shut down rumours that it would be her final album.
Asked whether she’d be retiring to a life of domestic bliss (as some fans have suggested), the singer laughed: “That’s fucking rude! “That’s not why people get married — to quit your job.”
