Madonna

HALLOWEEN season is in full swing with partygoers across the country dressing up in their scariest get-ups this weekend to enjoy the most terrifying time of the year.

However, it’s also an opportunity for people to wear their sexiest, raciest outfits as they brave the Autumn chill in next-to-nothing ensembles.

Celebrities are no different as many famous faces have donned risqué costumes over the years.

Let’s take a look at the sexiest Halloween outfits ever from Maura Higgins as Julia Roberts’ iconic film character in Pretty Woman to Ashley Roberts as Madonna…

Maura Higgins as Pretty Woman

Back in 2021, Maura channelled her sexiest Julia Roberts look from Pretty Woman.

Fans of the hit film will remember the character of Vivian Ward donning the iconic sexy white and blue dress with knee-high leather boots.

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Maura wore a pretty identical dress as she showed off her tanned legs and midriff, with plenty of underboob showing.

The Love Island finalist donned a platinum blonde wig with a black hat as she went full glam with a sexy red lip.

Ashley Roberts as Madonna

The Pussycat Doll channelled another legend in the form of Madonna this week, namely from her Express Yourself performance as part of her Blond Ambition world tour in 1990.

Ashley looked as sexy as ever as she recreated Madonna’s iconic pink cone bra leotard look, which was originally designed by Jean Paul Gaultier.

She teamed it with a pair of black loose-fit trousers and the singer’s iconic high-pony with a braid wrap-around.

Ashley went for a bold make-up look with a red lip and dark eyelashes as she showed off her sexiest Halloween look yet.

Megan Barton Hanson as Disco Demon

Who would have thought anybody could make a ‘Disco Demon’ look good? Well Megan can!

She’s no stranger to showing off her stunning body in daring outfits but in 2020, she threw it all out of the water with her most risqué look ever.

Megan posed totally nude apart from a pair of towering heels and silver body paint in saucy snaps as a ‘Disco Demon’.

Her eye-popping display featured glitter and mirror shards over her chest which enhanced her cleavage.

Her boobs and stomach were painted in splashes of silver and sequins, with matching devil horns perched on her head.

Maya Jama as Jessica Rabbit

Maya donned her sultriest look in 2020 when she dressed as Jessica Rabbit for the Celebrity Juice Halloween Special.

The ITV star wore the legendary red sequined gown which perfectly synched her waist in all of the right places as her cleavage threatened to spill out.

The presenter showed off her pins with a very high leg split as she posed seductively in snaps on Instagram.

She brought her outfit together with some suede purple gloves as she paid homage to the iconic cartoon character with a red wig and face paint.

Georgia Steel as Catwoman

In 2024, Georgia embraced a Catwoman-inspired look which left us all in shock, donning a tight latex cat suit.

She showed off her toned legs and cleavage in the racy suit which she paired with matching black latex gloves and a sexy face mask.

Georgia posed in sultry snaps as she looked out into the distance in her naughty costume.

Myleene Klass as Wonder Woman

Last Halloween, Myleene made sure all eyes were on her as she posed in a very sexy Wonder Woman look.

She stunned in the barely-there costume as she showed off her toned legs in the stunning fit.

The Loose Women star wandered through the woods in a video clip as she got into character of the female superhero.

Tallia Storm as Cowgirl

Singer Tallia proved how much of a Beyonce fan she was when she dressed as a sexy cowgirl for the Kiss Haunted House Party last year.

She wore a blue sexy latex bra with white knickers and cut-out latex pants held up with a blue belt.

She accessorised with a red collar and cuffs, a white cowgirl hat and a pair of red boots.

Tallia brought her look together with a Renaissance sash as she posed seductively for the camera.

Alex Scott as Grace Jones

Strictly Come Dancing star Alex channelled icon Grace Jones from the 1986 film Vamp.

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Much like the legendary look, the host covered her breasts in a spiraled metal bra, with body paint all over her naked body.

She looked unrecognisable in a red bob wing, with her face painted white with heavy make-up.

Madonna’s “MDNA.” Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising.” Mariah Carey’s “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel.”

According to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, none of these albums — each the 12th studio LP by its respective maker — has sold 4 million copies in the United States in the decade or more since it was released.

Yet that’s what Taylor Swift just did in a single week with her 12th album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” which Billboard reported Monday had moved 4.002 million copies in the seven days between Oct. 3 and 9.

That figure, which combines sales and streaming numbers, represents the biggest opening week for an album in modern history, breaking the record set by Adele 10 years ago when her “25” moved 3.482 million units in its first week.

Swift marked the achievement on Instagram on Monday with a note to her 281 million followers.

“I’ll never forget how excited I was in 2006 when my first album sold 40,000 copies in its first week,” she wrote. “I was 16 and couldn’t even fathom that that many people would care enough about my music to invest their time and energy into it. Since then I’ve tried to meet and thank as many people as I could who have given me the chance to chase this insane dream. Here we are all these years later and a hundred times that many people showed up for me this week.

“I have 4 million thank you’s I want to send to the fans,” she added, “and 4 million reasons to feel even more proud of this album than I already was.”

The speed with which Swift hit the 4-million mark is undeniably impressive. Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem,” the biggest album of 2025 so far, has sold and streamed the equivalent of 4.2 million copies, according to the trade journal Hits. But “I’m the Problem” has been out since mid-May; “Showgirl” will almost certainly have surpassed Wallen’s LP by the end of this week (if it hasn’t already).

What’s more remarkable is where “Showgirl’s” blockbuster success comes in the arc of Swift’s career.

Madonna and Springsteen were both in their early 50s when they released their 12th LPs; Carey was 40 when “Imperfect Angel” came out. Swift, in contrast, is only 35 — one advantage of starting out professionally as a teenager.

Still, Swift has been a star for nearly two decades, a point at which many pop musicians have shifted the focus of their work to touring even as they continue to make new records generally ignored by all but their most devoted fans. In 2024, according to Pollstar, Madonna’s and Springsteen’s latest road shows — each drawn from a catalog packed with hit songs — were among the year’s 10 highest-grossing tours.

And indeed Swift has been amply rewarded on the road: At No. 1 on Pollstar’s list was her Eras tour, which sold more than $2 billion in tickets across 149 dates on five continents.

Yet unlike virtually every other veteran act in music, Swift’s recording business is growing along with her live business.

“Everything that’s happening here is historic and unprecedented,” said Hits’ editor in chief, Lenny Beer. “Maybe if the Beatles had stayed together, we’d have seen something like it.”

Also worth considering: Nobody seems to think “The Life of a Showgirl” is Swift’s best album. Reviews have been mixed, and even some fans have expressed disappointment with the record on social media — a once-unthinkable development among the fiercely loyal Swifties.

So how did the singer pull off such a feat?

First, a little math: Of “Showgirl’s” 4 million units, approximately 3.5 million were sales of either digital or physical versions of the album (including CDs, cassettes and vinyl LPs); the remaining half-million came from streams of the album’s songs on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, which the data firm Luminate counts toward what it calls streaming equivalent albums.

“Showgirl’s” 12 songs racked up 681 million streams in all, Billboard said — the fourth-biggest streaming week of all time, behind Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” and Drake’s “Scorpion” and “Certified Lover Boy.” But the album’s sales number is the largest ever recorded since Luminate started tracking sales electronically in 1991.

Among Swift’s strategies to get to that number was selling more than three dozen editions of the album, each with its own artwork and bonus material designed to lure collectors. On vinyl alone, “Showgirl” came out in eight so-called variants, which helped drive the album’s first-week vinyl sales to a modern record of 1.3 million copies.

Offering something for sale doesn’t necessarily mean anyone will buy it, of course. Yet Swift was positioning “The Life of a Showgirl” as a juggernaut from the moment she announced it. Appearing with her fiancé, the NFL player Travis Kelce, on his “New Heights” podcast in August, the singer described the album as a return to the hit-making ways of albums like “Red” and “1989” after the relatively experimental “Folklore” and “Tortured Poets Department.”

To make “Showgirl,” she reteamed with the Swedish producers Max Martin and Shellback, with whom she’d collaborated on some of her biggest singles, including “Blank Space,” “Bad Blood” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” On “New Heights” she and Kelce talked about the new album as a “180” from the moody confessions of “Tortured Poets,” whetting appetites for the kind of crisply hooky Taylor Swift songs that blanketed Top 40 radio in the mid-2010s.

Promised the football star: “12 bangers.”

Fans visit an activation for Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” at the Westfield Century City mall on Oct. 4.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Once “Showgirl” was out, Swift jumped into the promotional fray with more gusto than she’d summoned in years, sitting for numerous radio interviews and putting in appearances on Graham Norton’s, Jimmy Fallon’s and Seth Meyers’ late-night shows; the weekend after the album’s release, a glorified sizzle reel called “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl” played in AMC movie theaters across the country.

On Monday, Swift kept the conversation going with the announcement that two Eras-related projects are headed to Disney+ in December: a six-part behind-the-scenes docuseries and a concert film of the tour’s finale in Vancouver.

“One of the hardest parts of ensuring you have a record-setting first week is making sure that everyone who could possibly be interested in your album knows about it,” said Bill Werde, director of the Bandier Program for Recording and Entertainment Industries at Syracuse University. “I’m not sure anyone has ever covered that need the way Taylor did with this album cycle.”

Yet “The Life of a Showgirl” has not been greeted as enthusiastically as some of Swift’s earlier work.

Pitchfork said “her music’s never been less compelling,” while The Guardian called the album “dull razzle-dazzle from a star who seems frazzled.” Fans on TikTok have complained that Swift’s lyrics — which take up her romance with Kelce, the burdens of fame and an apparent beef with Charli XCX — are unusually shallow; some have even formulated a kind of tradwife critique of “Showgirl” in which Swift is seen as upholding regressive ideas about marriage and domesticity.

The album has also attracted criticism from people who say Swift’s songs recycle familiar elements from other pop tunes without giving credit: the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” in “Wood,” for instance, and the Jonas Brothers’ “Cool” in the LP’s closing title track.

“When every song is a derivative of another song, that’s an issue,” said one hit songwriter who asked not to be named in order to speak freely. “That one song is the Jonas Brothers song — the exact same melody. And here’s how lazy that is: It’s the same key and the same tempo.”

In Werde’s view, Swift’s place atop the pop hierarchy makes such carping inevitable. “Anytime an artist gets this big, there’s going to be backlash,” he said — a take with which Swift would likely agree.

“I welcome the chaos,” she said in an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “The rule of show business is: If it’s the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping.”

Even so, the polarized reaction to “Showgirl” — Swift’s 15th album to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — raises questions about the breadth of Swift’s popularity as compared to its depth. Should the album’s gargantuan numbers be taken as a sign that she appeals to a wide spectrum of pop music lovers or to a committed group of hardcore Swifties willing to spend untold amounts of money to demonstrate their loyalty?

“Showgirl’s” second-week stats should provide the beginnings of an answer, given that they won’t be shaped by one-time sales of all those limited-edition variants.

Then again, another unprecedented chart achievement from the album’s first week is already shedding some light on the matter: “The Fate of Ophelia,” the album’s lead single, is the first song ever to debut inside the top 10 of Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart — an indication of the heavy Top 40 radio play it’s getting along with the millions of daily streams that have kept it atop Spotify’s U.S. Top 50 tally since the song came out.

That’s one banger certified, with more perhaps to come.

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She is working on her 15th studio album — a sequel to 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor — which will be her first since 2019’s Madame X.

Madonna is expected to go on hols with boyfriend Akeem Morris, 29, for her birthday next week.

Last year she celebrated in Pompeii.

Other birthdays have included trips to Lisbon and Sicily.

Meanwhile, Madonna has spent the past few years working on a movie about her life.

Actress Julia Garner was lined up to play the Hung Up hitmaker in the film before it appeared to be left on the shelf over two years ago.

Now it seems that plans have been re-imagined with Julia confirming last month she is still lined up to play the iconic popstar in a Netflix miniseries about her life.

Madonna and Julia are working with filmmaker Shawn Levy on the project, which is in the early stages of development.

Confirming that the project was still happening, despite the uncertainty, Julia told the SmartLess podcast: “Yeah, I mean, that’s supposed to still happen.”

However, she did appear to hint that the project may still be far off hitting screens as she affirmed that “anything that’s great, takes time”.

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