NEW YORK – When Adele’s album “25” came out 10 years ago – featuring the hit Hello – it sold nearly 3.5 million copies out of the gate, breaking long-standing opening week sales numbers. An astonished music industry assumed that in the new age of streaming, no album could ever top it.

Then came Taylor Swift.

The Life Of A Showgirl, which came out on Oct 3, has now surpassed Adele’s decade-old record. According to initial sales reports collected by the tracking firm Luminate, and reported to Billboard, Showgirl has logged the equivalent of at least 3.5 million sales in the United States in its first five days on sale, and it still has two days to go before the opening week sales period ends on Oct 9.

The success comes even as Swift navigates a mixed reaction to Showgirl. For an artist accustomed to receiving heavy helpings of praise from critics and fans, the responses have been all over the map, including some notably harsh reviews – Pitchfork gave it 5.9 out of 10, The Guardian two stars out of five – and many disappointed hot takes on social media among the usual hosannas.

“I welcome the chaos,” Swift said of the reactions in a video interview with Zane Lowe of Apple Music. “I’m not the art police,” she added.

The roll-out for Showgirl included an 89-minute “release party” in cinemas over the weekend, which featured the premiere of a music video and behind-the-scenes segments that some critics compared to DVD extras. It drew US$33 million (S$42.7 million) at box offices in the United States and Canada, clobbering the total for The Smashing Machine, the latest picture from action star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The maths behind Swift’s victory shows how physical media formats like CDs and vinyl LPs remain key to the success of top albums even now, when streaming accounts for about 82 per cent of revenues from recorded music sales in the United States, and services like Spotify and Apple Music have become the default listening platforms for most fans.

The 3.5 million sales tally is an “...