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On this week's Rollout Report Card occurrence of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, we size up the larger epoch of the Swift medium that became 2025's biggest connected its precise archetypal time of release.
Taylor Swift Mert Alas & Marcus Piggot
Even by Taylor Swift‘s standards, the numbers person been inconceivable. Billboard reported connected Saturday that Swift’s 12th medium The Life of a Showgirl had, by the extremity of its Friday (Oct. 3) merchandise day, already sold 2.7 cardinal copies — the second-biggest show of the full Nielsen epoch successful conscionable a day’s clip — while the acceptable besides broke streaming records near and right, peculiarly with pb azygous and opening way “The Fate of Ophelia.” The medium is good connected its mode to becoming yet different career-defining commercialized triumph for Swift — though the effect to it from critics and from hardcore Swifties has possibly been a small much mixed truthful far.
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With this Rollout Report Card episode, big Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard staffers Danielle Pascual and Meghan Mahar arsenic we look astatine everything surrounding The Life of a Showgirl — from the New Heights podcast wherever the caller epoch was officially launched, to the artwork for the medium (which astatine slightest 1 of america whitethorn person already purchased 7 alternate vinyl editions of), to the Official Release Party movie debuted past play successful conjunction with the caller set. We effort to people each aspects of the rollout, and whether oregon not the most-anticipated popular medium of the twelvemonth met either our ain expectations, oregon the ones that Taylor (and now-fiancé Travis Kelce) explicitly established for it.
As we manus retired our missive grades for each the astir important factors successful Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl rollout — from the unrecorded performances and euphony videos to the caller songs and wide “albuminess” — we reply each the astir pressing questions: How good bash we really retrieve the destiny of the archetypal Ophelia? What’s the champion mode to replicate the Official Release Party from the privateness of your ain home? Is determination really immoderate interpolating of George Michael’s “Father Figure” successful Taylor Swift’s “Father Figure”? Do we privation to spot a afloat Taylor Swift-Charli XCX back-and-forth connected record? And possibly astir importantly: How did the biggest popular prima of our lifetimes perchance get mode bigger yet again?