Taylor Swift has broken two Spotify records following the midnight release of "The Life of a Showgirl: Encore," an EP featuring four new songs from her 2025 album. Both "Patient Zero" and Swift herself set records as the most-streamed song and female artist respectively in a single day on Spotify for 2026, demonstrating her continued streaming dominance. The release came after a carefully orchestrated promotional campaign that began with cryptic clues embedded in an Emmys broadcast sketch.

The EP includes four tracks—"Patient Zero," "Cleveland!," "Pink Clouding," and "Babylon"—created during a trip to Sweden with collaborators Max and Shellback. Swift explained that the new songs were written in gratitude for the original album's record-breaking success, which achieved the largest first-week streaming numbers for any album in history. The "Patient Zero" music video, featuring cinematography by Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki and starring Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell, premiered at this Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards, where Swift received the inaugural Artist-Director Award.