Taylor Swift's 'Showgirl' Is No. 1 Again, a Year After Its Release

Four new songs on 'The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore' drew 173,000 units and put the album back on top.

Taylor Swift's "The Life of a Showgirl" is the No. 1 album in the U.S. again, nine months after it last sat on top. What brought it back wasn't a new album. It was the same one with four more songs on it.

That reissue, "The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore," returned the record to the top of the Billboard 200, the chart released Sunday, October 4, Variety reported. It's the album's 13th week at No. 1, a run only one other Swift album has beaten.

The album earned 173,000 equivalent units in the week, by the count of Billboard and the data firm Luminate, and most of it came from people pressing play: 136,000 units from streaming, or 138.79 million on-demand streams. Sales added just 21,000. Those sales were downloads only, Variety reported, because there's no CD or vinyl of the Encore edition on shelves yet.

Nobody else came close. Olivia Rodrigo's latest album took No. 2 with 67,000 units, well under half of Swift's total, and last week's No. 1, "Bass Persuades," dropped out of the top 10 altogether.

Swift gave the new songs a big push. The video for "Patient Zero," the Encore's single, premiered during the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 27 with Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell in it, and then Swift turned up in Johnson's "Saturday Night Live" monologue playing her breakup therapist, as the Globe reported.

The single gets its own test Monday, October 5, when Billboard puts out the top 10 of the Hot 100, its singles chart. "Patient Zero" is expected to enter at No. 1, Variety reported.

The album's comeback had a long wait behind it. "Showgirl" arrived in October 2025 and held the top spot through most of the holiday shopping season, a first run that ended at 12 weeks with the chart dated Jan. 10, 2026; for the next nine months the top spot went to everyone else. This week's chart is the album's 52nd.

The one Swift album that did better is "The Tortured Poets Department," with 17 weeks on top, while "1989" and "Fearless" each managed 11. Thirteen weeks also matches the 13 that Drake's "Views" spent there in 2016, his longest run on top, according to Billboard's career tally of weeks at No. 1.

That same tally, updated in June, had Swift at 98 career weeks on top, more than any other solo act, with the latest of them that January week for "Showgirl." The Encore adds a 99th. That's 32 weeks clear of Elvis Presley's 67, the most of any male solo artist, and 33 short of the Beatles, who hold the record with 132.

Swift would need about two and a half more "Showgirl"-size runs to catch the band. The Beatles' last week at No. 1 came in February 2001. Hers is on this week's chart.

Source: Variety, retrieved October 5, 2026. Other sources: Billboard.