Taylor Swift Is First Female Artist In History To Sell Out Sydney's Allianz Stadium

SYDNEY, Dec. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Taylor Swift is now the first female artist in history to sell out Sydney's Allianz Stadium, as she kicked off the Australian leg of her RED tour last night to a capacity crowd of more than 40,900 fans. The seven-time Grammy winner and reigning Billboard and American Music Awards Artist of the Year is also the first female solo artist in twenty years to undertake a national stadium concert tour of Australia.

Taylor's close to two-hour show impressed critics as well as fans:

• The Sydney Morning Herald lauded her as "the real deal," and praising her "appealing personality...a heap of irresistible anthems...slick visuals...and genuine musical talent."
• The Daily Telegraph declared, "Taylor Swift dazzles. Her musicality is undeniable…the wildly successful young woman is talented, confident, aspirational...maybe talent and hits can still win."
• The Guardian raved, "Swift staked her claim for the title of the world's biggest female pop star…[she] brought Sydney to a standstill."

Taylor played to 1.3 million fans in sold-out stadiums and arenas across the U.S. and Canada on her RED Tour earlier this year, and just wrapped a 3-night run of sold-out shows at Auckland's Vector Arena, playing to close to 30,000 fans. The New Zealand Herald wrote that Swift "was confident, energetic, chatty, and all smiles as she basked in the adoration of her fans, as she lead her troupe of dancers and band members through a fluid, colourful set that included multi-level staging, impressive feats of engineering, a carousel, music box, flying sparks, and jumbo screens."

Taylor Swift's The RED Tour continues on to stadiums in Brisbane (Dec. 7), Perth (Dec. 11), and Melbourne (Dec. 14). The RED Tour will travel to the UK and Germany in early 2014.

Taylor's Allianz Stadium performance of her global #1 hit "I Knew You Were Trouble." will be featured on "The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live!," which airs Friday, December 6^th at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. 

Just last week, Taylor was the big winner of the night the American Music Awards, taking home four trophies, including the evening's biggest award, Artist of the Year. Taylor is the first artist in history to win AMA Artist of the Year three times. Also last month, Taylor won four CMA Awards, including the prestigious Pinnacle Award. Taylor was profiled as "The Biggest Pop Star In The World" on the cover of the November 25^th issue of New York magazine (read the article here: http://www.vulture.com/2013/11/taylor-swift-reigning-queen-of-pop.html).

Taylor's album RED, released just over a year ago on Big Machine Records, has sold more than 6 million copies worldwide to date, including more than 1.2 million copies in the U.S. in its first week, scoring the highest first-week sales debut of any album in over a decade. Taylor is the only female artist in music history (and just the fourth artist ever) to twice have an album (2012's RED and 2010's Speak Now) hit the 1 million first-week sales figure. With RED, Taylor became the first artist since the Beatles (and the only female artist in history) to log six or more weeks at #1 with three consecutive studio albums.

The Australia and New Zealand portion of The RED Tour is produced and promoted by The Frontier Touring Company. The tour sponsors are Coca-Cola, Qantas Airways and Taylor Swift Fragrances. All will bring fun experiences and opportunities to fans at each show.

SOURCE Big Machine Records