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BILLBOARD CANADA FYI
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Mert Alas & Marcus Piggot
Taylor Swift
Chart Beat
Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ Breaks Several Billboard Chart Records in Canada
The megastar's newest studio album is earning a multitude of accolades, as it marks her 15th album to hit No. 1 in Canada, following 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department.
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Taylor Swift is breaking multiple Billboard chart records in Canada.
As with many of the artist's recent releases, Swift's new album, The Life of a Showgirl, has been a blockbuster success since its release on Oct. 3.
According to new data from Universal Music Canada and Luminate and Billboard Canada chart performance, in its first week of charting, Showgirl was the biggest album debut in the country for Swift in the modern streaming era — or for any artist.
The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart, her 15th No. 1 on the chart. With this milestone, Swift is now tied with Canadian icon Celine Dion for the most No. 1 albums of all time in the country and is the only non-Canadian artist to reach that mark.
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Swift's last album, 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, stayed at No. 1 for 12 weeks. Showgirl’s win continues Swift’s streak of 14 consecutive studio albums debuting at No. 1, beginning with 2008’s Fearless and including the four “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings: Red, 1989, Fearless and Speak Now.
Showgirl has now cemented Swift as the sole artist with all top 5 of the highest album debuts in Canada in the streaming era (since streams began contributing to Billboard chart performance in the early 2010s).
The Life of a Showgirl reportedly amassed over 1.5 billion global streams, securing the largest debut of 2025.
This isn’t the first time Swift has broken records in Canada — last year’s The Tortured Poets Department and her Post Malone-featuring single “Fortnight” earned similar chart records. At this point, Swift is competing with herself.
But it doesn’t stop there for Showgirl. On last week’s Billboard Canadian Hot 100, the week of Oct. 18, the top 12 entries were all of the album's 12 tracks. The album's lead single, “The Fate of Ophelia,” hit No. 1 and has become the most-streamed song in a single day and a single week in Canadian history. On that chart, the 11 other tracks ranked: “Opalite” (No. 2), “Elizabeth Taylor” (No. 3), “Father Figure” (No. 4), “Wood” (No. 5), “The Life of a Showgirl,” featuring Sabrina Carpenter (No. 6), “Cancelled!” (No. 7), “Actually Romantic” (No. 8), “Eldest Daughter” (No. 9), “Wi$h Li$t” (No. 10) and “Ruin the Friendship” (No. 11) and “Honey” (No. 12).She also made history in her home country, selling four million copies in the album’s debut on the charts, topping the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart. Showgirl’s release broke the record for the most No. 1 albums in the 21st century, making Swift the first solo artist to achieve the most chart-topping projects on the chart.
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Last week, Swift took to Instagram to share a heartfelt statement about the album's success on the charts.
“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 said. “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.”
She continued: “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 💐.”
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It's a nod to the album's Sabrina Carpenter-featuring closing title track, which features recordings from Swift's final Eras Tour show in Vancouver.
This week, Swift no longer has every song on the Canadian Hot 100, with chart juggernauts "Golden" by HUNTR/X and "Ordinary" by Alex Warren breaking her sweep with entries at No. 2 and No. 4, respectively. However, Swift is still a dominant force on the Canadian charts, with “The Fate of Ophelia” earning a second week at No. 1 and The Life of a Showgirl remaining at No. 1 on Canadian Albums.
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