Photo Credit: Taylor Swift (Instagram) / TAS Rights Management
The numbers are out, and it's official -- Taylor Swift tops 4 million equivalent album units in the first week of her new album's release.
The Life of a Showgirl was destined to be a chart-topper, but it was a matter of just how high the album would soar. In its first week, the album set a record for the highest number of equivalent album units in a single week, with 4.002 million units, according to Luminate data reported by Billboard. That figure smashes the previous record by more than half a million.
Of course, Taylor set another chart record simply by having the album debut in the top slot; she is now the solo artist with the most #1 albums, having surpassed her previous tie with both Drake and Jay-Z. She now trails only The Beatles, whose legacy has seen them secure a whopping 19 #1 albums.
Previously, the record for an album's best week was held by Adele's 25, which secured 3.482 million units sold in December 2015.
"I'll never forget how excited I was in 2006 when my first album sold 40,000 copies in its first week," Swift wrote on her Instagram. "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. Since then I've tried to meet and thank as many people as I could who gave given me the chance to chase this insane dream. 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," she continued. "Thank you for going out to celebrate this project in the movie theaters, investing in vinyl, streaming, watching the video, buying CDs, reading the poems I wrote inside the packaging, and immersing yourselves in 'The Life of a Showgirl.' I'll cherish this feeling forever. Just wow. Thank you for the lovely bouquet," Swift concluded, in a nod to lyrics from the album's title track.
Swift also went well above and beyond her own previous first-week best. Her best debut prior to Showgirl was The Tortured Poets Department with 2.61 million units in its first week last year.
The numbers incorporate both sales and streaming data. Billboard reported that album sales alone totaled 3,479,500, while streaming added another 522,600. That also follows the #1 she secured at the box office last week with "Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl." The event, which featured a combination of videos, commentary, and behind-the-scenes footage, made $33 million in theaters domestically over its three-day limited run.
Share on:
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Copy Link