Pardon the understatement, but it’s been a busy couple of weeks for Taylor Swift. On Oct. 3, she released The Life of a Showgirl, and its gargantuan impact has spread across the Oct. 18-dated Billboard charts. The set debuted atop the Billboard 200 with record-breaking numbers, and its entire tracklist dominates the top 12 spots on the Billboard Hot 100. More, its unprecedented success is global.
The opening track on Showgirl, “The Fate of Ophelia,” arrives at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts, becoming the first song to simultaneously debut atop both tallies and the U.S.-based Hot 100 since Swift’s own “Fortnight,” featuring Post Malone, in May 2024. It’s a common theme across her many chart achievements that her biggest competition is herself. This is her fourth song to accomplish this global hat trick, in addition to “Anti-Hero” in 2022 and “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” in 2021.
Swift goes on to dominate the upper reaches of both global lists, owning 12 of the top 13 spots on the Global 200 and 12 of the top 14 on Global Excl. U.S. From 216.9 million streams for “Ophelia” down to 81.3 million for “Honey,” the album’s 12 tracks combined for just under 1.4 billion official streams worldwide (1.386 billion) in the week ending Oct. 9, according to Luminate.
That total is the second biggest one-week global streaming sum for an album since the charts launched in 2020. It follows – you guessed it – Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department from last year, which garnered 1.76 billion clicks in its first week, while coming in ahead of 2022’s Midnights, with 1.16 billion. That gives her the top three global streaming weeks in the charts’ five-year history. Bad Bunny and Drake are the only other acts to clear the one billion mark, each of whom did it once.
The Life of a Showgirl’s first-week streaming numbers are eye-popping, but even more so considering the album’s relatively brief track list. At 12 songs, it’s the shortest collection among the top 15 biggest global album debuts, presenting an uphill battle against projects with 15, 20 and even 30-plus songs.
On average, the 12 songs on The Life of a Showgirl drew 115.5 million streams worldwide in their first week. That isn’t just a record in the global-chart era — it’s double 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 50 million per song. Swift already owned this record, and its runner-up slot, and now she has improved upon it by 99.97%.
Of Swift’s enormous global total, 674.4 million streams (49%) are from the United States and 711.7 million (51%) are from beyond (with the Global 200 reflecting activity in more than 200 territories). Among the 57 albums that have totaled 250 million streams in their first week since the global charts’ inception, that split falls just about in the middle, unsurprisingly. It’s more international than almost all such hip-hop and country sets, but more U.S.-centric than Latin and K-pop records.
