Not A Blank Space
For all the shock value that comes with a surprise drop (of which Ms Swift herself has indulged in a fair few), there's nothing like a hugely anticipated major artist release. And nobody does those quite like Taylor Swift. Leveraging the online medium like she does so well, and in this case, even encompassing guest slots on her boyfriend and his brother's podcast, she carefully built up the release of The Life Of A Showgirl into a good old-fashioned event. Which is precisely what we experienced this week.
All we really have to do is let the statistics speak for themselves. By the time the first midweek figures arrived on Monday it was clear Swift's record was going to do some quite phenomenal numbers, having already surpassed the 270,000 units her last offering The Tortured Poets Department clocked up in the whole of its first week. The new album duly finishes the week with a quite phenomenal sale of 423,000 units. That's beyond even normal Taylor Swift numbers, the highest weekly sale accumulated by any album since Ed Sheeran's Divide spawned 672,000 sales more than eight years ago. No other overseas, OK "international" artist has managed more in the 21st century.
At the risk of sounding anything approaching a negative note amongst these superlatives, as ever, we have to note the inflationary effect on these numbers of Taylor Swift's usual strategy of spreading her music out across many, many editions. As Popbitch noted this week, there are as many as 27 different physical versions of the vinyl album across vinyl, CD and cassette, two different digital download editions, along with a boxed set which comes with er, a free cardigan. Some truly dedicated Swifties may have snapped up the lot. A great many will have gone for several. The reigning Queen Of Pop is also Queen of the multibuy.
These cross-pollinated versions are almost certainly behind the other extraordinary statistic that The Life Of A Showgirl moved a phenomenal 125,952 vinyl albums this week, the vast majority of which are surely destined to never be taken out of their packaging. That number is - believe it or not - more than any other album in directly recorded chart history. No other album in the Kantar Milward Brown database (dating back to 1994) has ever done that number, and nothing in the 1983-1994 Gallup compiled era came close to this. It isn't impossible that something moved more plastic copies back in the 60s or 70s when it was the primary format, but there are no numbers to say for sure. And back then it was even harder to manufacture and distribute records in enough numbers to satisfy such demand.
You Need To Calm Down
The Life Of A Showgirl is Swift's 14th No.1 album in total, further extending her record as the solo female artist with the most No.1 albums to her name. It now puts her joint-second with The Rolling Stones on the all-time list. Only Robbie Williams and The Beatles with 15 apiece now have more - and you will note that Taylor Swift now accelerates ahead of Elvis Presley as the international act with the most No.1 albums. Swift has reached 14 No.1 albums faster than any other artist in history, her first No.1 album Red landing in October 2012, just shy of 13 years ago.
Fascinatingly, it is also Taylor Swift's third No.1 album of 2025. Lover (Live From Paris) hit the summit in February, while The Tortured Poets Department hopped back to the top of the charts in April. Locating any other acts who have done that as well is - like always - a murky business. The Beatles definitely achieved it in 1965, with Beatles For Sale, Help and Rubber Soul all squeezing in before the end of the year. You can argue they managed it too a year earlier, With The Beatles starting the year at No.1, although it actually ascended to the top over Christmas, followed by A Hard Days Night and Beatles For Sale (two of only three new No.1 albums in the whole of that year). And then there are the exploits of T-Rex in 1972, hitting the top with Electric Warrior and Bolan Boogie but also with a double-album re-issue of two older albums credited to their previous incarnation of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Technically the same act but under two different names. Decide for yourself whether that still counts.
Cardigan
Whatever the reaction to the way the music itself sounds (and you will have read plenty of hot takes this week on that very subject), huge digital numbers for the album meant huge digital numbers for its singles. Not only does Taylor Swift become the second female star in as many weeks to do the chart double (topping singles and albums charts together) but she finally lands the one ultimate accolade that has so far eluded her. With singles at 1,2 and 3 as well as a No.1 album she becomes only the fifth artist in history to achieve the chart grand slam, and the second in a little over a year following Sabrina Carpenter in 2024. The others with the honour are all men - Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles. None of these acts however actually entered the charts simultaneously with all three singles, giving Taylor Swift a unique chart record. No other act has ever entered the charts at 1,2 and 3 in the same week. And this is the first time the Top 3 have all been new entries since November 2014.
The biggest track from The Life Of A Showgirl is its opener, and the always presumed lead single. She could have easily released this as an album teaser, but somehow it makes even more of an impact by appearing alongside all the others and winning out through sheer instant popularity. The Fate Of Ophelia sets the stage for the theme of the rest of the work, how the lost little girl of The Tortured Poets Department has had her life transformed by one single man. Ophelia drowned herself in grief that Hamlet appeared not to love her. Taylor Swift now drowns the rest of us in joy even if her telling isn't quite as Shakespearean. It is only her fifth No.1 single in the UK, her first since Fortnight spent a week at the summit in May 2024
Still, it is the most compelling track amongst a set of tricky listens, but with its 80s new wave vibe and immaculately choreographed video it can take its rightful place amongst her biggest hits. And big it truly is, with a sale of 131,500 units. That's the biggest of any single this year, naturally, and the highest weekly calculated chart sale posted by any single since Ladbaby's 136,445 for Christmas 2021. If you want to disregard Christmas hits (and who doesn't), then it is the biggest sale for any normal No.1 record since Adele's Easy On Me totalled 217,317 sales in its first week earlier that same year. And we can note that as huge as Taylor Swift's single is, it comes nowhere near the numbers by any metric that Adele managed.
The question has to be asked just by how much her number will drop in Week 2. Of her four previous No.1 hits, the only to spend more than a sneeze at the top was 2022 single Anti-Hero which enjoyed a six week run. So you never know. Grim as it may be to contemplate, this could also be the last proper No.1 single before Christmas.
Taylor Swift's two other eligible chart hits are Opalite at No.2 and Elizabeth Taylor at No.3, taking her career total of Top 10 hits to 33 and her Top 3 hits to 17. Were the other tracks from the album eligible to chart she would have equalled Ed Sheeran's record of 9 out of the Top 10 hits.
Love Story
With that all out of the way, it turns out you are getting a hot take after all. Because surely never has there been an album with such phenomenal sales whose reviews have been so average. Despite teasing the album as a return to pop (with Max Martin at the helm), a non-Swiftie who is not caught up in hero worship will listen to the set waiting for the killer chorus that never comes. They will marvel how she throws shade at Charli XCX yet spends half the album with a drum machine set to boom-clap, and be conscious that the song gaining the most notoriety achieves this not through musicianship, but through a lyric whose shocking candour about her boyfriend's anatomy has dominated online discussion.
Taylor Swift retains her crown as the biggest pop star on the planet, making rivals such as Sabrina look like mere pretenders, but she does so by offering up a vibe rather than an artistic triumph. But as of this moment, she is immune to any of that criticism. She just made the biggest album of the year, possibly the biggest album of the decade. It matters not that she mostly forgot to make it any good.
In a world without Taylor Swift we would still have been treated to a ding-dong battle between the two singles that have been duking it out at the top of the charts for the past month. Despite a midweek scare Olivia Dean's Man I Need is the biggest of the two once again, reaching No.4 with a sale of almost 70,000 with Huntr/X's Golden at No.5 with a chart sale of 64,000. Both numbers that would have ensured a No.1 hit under any normal circumstances.
Golden's ACR clock has now ticked twice for the second time.
What Is Left Over
The arrival of the Swift singles kind of knackers up the rest of the singles chart, the incumbents of which all suffer downward pressure on their chart places. For those on the rise we have to look to the lower rungs, and a fascinating set of singles by artists whose names don't resemble words in the English langauge.
Leading the way is viral hit Make Me Feel from Norwegian DJ Oskar Med K which jumps to No.29 in its seventh week on the chart. One place behind is Now Or Never from Tkandz/Cxsper - at least as credited. I'm not sure it isn't the remix featuring Nemzzz that is doing much of the heavy lifting. Be quiet spellchecker, I said what I said.
Also surfacing only after several months available is Phantom from rappers EsDeeKid and Rico Ace. Although at least you can pronounce their names. Minor hits all they may be, but I remind everyone that the first big singles of the year have a tendency to be mostly unnoticed chart bubblers from October and November which finally find their voices when the dust has cleared. 2026s surprise could quite easily be one of these.
We are just three weeks away from Halloween, but there's no horror story from the final new arrival of the week. Just a two place rise for Dracula which means Australian multi-instrumentalist star Tame Impala has a Top 40 single for the first time ever as it hops onto the bottom rung hoping we would not notice.
Quite a week then wasn't it? Props should go to the only artist of any note brave enough to release an album in the same week as Taylor Swift. One James Morrison who has this week's No.5 album with Fight Another Day. Kudos, brother, you went for it anyway.
