Pop music juggernaut Taylor Swift continues to sweep the charts, but her reach is even bigger than you think. The “Shake It Off” singer has made history once again with her newest release, “The Life of a Showgirl,” which dropped on October 3rd.
As expected, Swift’s twelfth studio album hit the top of the Billboard charts. The company reports that the record’s twelve songs dominate the top twelve spots on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first album to achieve this feat in history, since the charts began in the 1950s. However, the number of global streams are staggering.
“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,” Billboard writes. “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%.”
Swift shared her own reaction to the success of “The Life of a Showgirl” on her Instagram page.
“I’ll never forget how excited I was in 2006 when my first album sold 40,000 copies in its first week. 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,” she admits. “Since then I’ve tried to meet and thank as many people as I could who have 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. 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.”
The opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” has been most popular with 216.9 million streams. It was followed by “Opalite,” which came in at number 2 on the Hot 100.
Swifties know that opal is the singer’s favorite gemstone, but opalite is a man-made version of the gem. She explained the song’s meaning further during her appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”
“It was interesting imagery and a cool metaphor for: Life isn’t always going to give you what you want, you’re not always going to get your way, you’re going to get your heart broken, things are going to happen to you, chaos will ensue — but you have to pick your own happiness. You choose it. It doesn’t always choose you. It doesn’t always just show up knocking on your door. You have to sometimes make your own happiness.”
Check out the sheet music for “Opalite”:
