Taylor Swift beats Adele’s first week in US sales record with Life of a Showgirl

The star has already sold 3.5m units of her critically divisive album, a new record in the modern era of music sales

Taylor Swift's divisive new album, The Life of a Showgirl, has beaten Adele's record-breaking 25 in first week sales numbers.

According to the data tracking firm Luminate, the album has already sold 3.5m units in the US which equates to 3.2m physical copies and 300,000 attributed to streaming activity. Adele achieved 3.482m in 2015 with her opening week sales of 25 which was led by the hit Hello.