Taylor Swift Doesn’t Just Break This Global Streaming Record — She Doubles It

Pardon the understatement, but it’s been a engaged mates of weeks for Taylor Swift. On Oct. 3, she released The Life of a Showgirl, and its gargantuan interaction has dispersed crossed the Oct. 18-dated Billboard charts. The acceptable debuted atop the Billboard 200 with record-breaking numbers, and its full tracklist dominates the apical 12 spots connected the Billboard Hot 100. More, its unprecedented occurrence is global.

The opening way connected Showgirl, “The Fate of Ophelia,” arrives astatine No. 1 connected the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts, becoming the archetypal opus to simultaneously debut atop some tallies and the U.S.-based Hot 100 since Swift’s ain “Fortnight,” featuring Post Malone, successful May 2024. It’s a communal taxable crossed her galore illustration achievements that her biggest contention is herself. This is her 4th opus to execute this planetary chapeau trick, successful summation to “Anti-Hero” successful 2022 and “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” successful 2021.

Swift goes connected to predominate the precocious reaches of some planetary lists, owning 12 of the apical 13 spots connected the Global 200 and 12 of the apical 14 connected Global Excl. U.S. From 216.9 cardinal streams for “Ophelia” down to 81.3 cardinal for “Honey,” the album’s 12 tracks combined for conscionable nether 1.4 cardinal authoritative streams worldwide (1.386 billion) successful the week ending Oct. 9, according to Luminate.

That full is the 2nd biggest one-week planetary streaming sum for an medium since the charts launched successful 2020. It follows – you guessed it – Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department from past year, which garnered 1.76 cardinal clicks successful its archetypal week, portion coming successful up of 2022’s Midnights, with 1.16 billion. That gives her the apical 3 planetary streaming weeks successful the charts’ five-year history. Bad Bunny and Drake are the lone different acts to wide the 1 cardinal mark, each of whom did it once.

The Life of a Showgirl’s first-week streaming numbers are eye-popping, but adjacent much truthful considering the album’s comparatively little way list. At 12 songs, it’s the shortest postulation among the apical 15 biggest planetary medium debuts, presenting an uphill conflict against projects with 15, 20 and adjacent 30-plus songs.

On average, the 12 songs connected The Life of a Showgirl drew 115.5 cardinal streams worldwide successful their archetypal week. That isn’t conscionable a grounds successful the global-chart epoch — it’s treble the next-closest competitor. Swift’s Midnights (20 tracks) averaged 57.8 million, The Tortured Poets Department (31) averaged 56.8 million, and albums by BTS, Drake, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Olivia Rodrigo exceeded 5...