Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl sparkles as the No. 1 title on the 2025 year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart. It’s the fifth time she has ruled the year-end roundup, and she remains the only act to have the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 album more than three times.
Explore All of Billboard’s 2025 Year-End Charts
The Life of a Showgirl’s year-end feat is especially remarkable considering it had only one week of activity on the Billboard 200 during the eligibility period. It debuted at No. 1 on the list dated Oct. 18 — the final week of the 2025 chart year — with a modern-era weekly record of 4 million equivalent album units earned in its first week in the United States, according to Luminate.
Swift led the 2024 year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart with The Tortured Poets Department, and in turn, she becomes the first act to have the year-end No. 1 Billboard 200 album in consecutive years with two different titles since Elton John in 1974 (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road) and 1975 (Greatest Hits). In between John and Swift, two artists went back-to-back but with the same albums: Michael Jackson with Thriller in 1983 and 1984 and Adele with 21 in 2011 and 2012.
Swift also had the year-end Billboard 200 No. 1 with reputation (2018), 1989 (2015) and Fearless (2009).
The Tortured Poets Department closes out 2025 at No. 6 on the year-end Billboard 200 Albums chart. Swift and Morgan Wallen each have a pair of titles in the top 10, as the latter’s I’m the Problem and One Thing at a Time are found at Nos. 2 and 7, respectively.
Billboard’s year-end music charts represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label and music contributor on the weekly charts from Oct. 26, 2024, through Oct. 18, 2025. Rankings for Luminate-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales or streaming during the weeks that the entries appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings. That methodology detail, and the October-October time period, account for some of the difference between these lists and the calendar-year recaps that are independently compiled by Luminate.
