Taylor Swift Shatters Sales Records With Million-Selling Debut

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 3, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- With 1,046,718 copies sold in the US in the first week of release, Taylor Swift's Speak Now album has scored SoundScan's biggest single-week sales total since 2005 and is the biggest debuting country studio album in history.

Speak Now accounted for 18% of total albums sold this week, setting a new record for percentage of total sales in a single week. One out of every five CDs or download sales this week was Taylor's Speak Now album, which was released on Big Machine Records.

Speak Now is just the 16th album in the SoundScan era to sell over a million copies in one week, and Taylor joins Whitney Houston, Norah Jones and Britney Spears as the only female artists in history to sell more than a million albums in a debut week. With 278,000 digital albums sold, Taylor broke her own record for most country digital albums sold in one week (set by 2008's Fearless album), and Speak Now marked the largest debut album release total (all genres) at Target in the history of the retail chain. Taylor, who earlier this year won four Grammys –including Album of the Year-- for Fearless, wrote the Speak Now album entirely by herself, and co-produced the project with Nathan Chapman.

Speak Now reached the iTunes #1 album position (all genres) within an hour of its release on October 25th, and the album's lead single, "Mine," is now Taylor's sixth #1 hit, jumping from #5 to #1 at Country radio this week. "Mine" has reached #11 at Top 40 radio and is Top 5 at A/C and Top 10 at Hot A/C. The video for "Mine" is in its 10th week at #1 on CMT, and has also reached #1 at GAC, MTV and VH1.

The Speak Now track "Mean" is this week's Hot Shot Debut on the Billboard Hot 100, marking the third straight week Taylor has held Hot Shot Debut honors. Taylor is the only artist in the 52-year history of the Hot 100 to achieve this feat. And just last month, Taylor set a new Billboard record for Most Top 10 debuts on the all-genre Hot 100 in the history of the chart.

Speak Now's sales and chart success is matched by the album's critical acclaim. Rolling Stone awarded the CD 4 stars, writing: "People like to fixate on Taylor Swift's youth, as if to say, yeah, she's pretty good for her age. But that just begs a question: Where are all the older people who are supposedly making better pop records than Taylor Swift? There aren't any."

The New York Times calls Speak Now "the most musically diverse [album] of her career…. And it's excellent too, possibly her best," and the Associated Press hailed Taylor as "a country-pop Jane Austen."

"Brilliant," raved the Hollywood Reporter, and Entertainment Weekly writes, "What Swift does extremely well is tell a story: Speak's 14 tracks are perfectly contained snow globes of romance and catharsis, whole cinematic narratives rendered in four-to six-minute miniatures." Us Weekly dubbed Speak Now "another unrestrained grand-slam," USA Today says, "when Taylor Swift speaks on her new album, you should listen," and People wrote that the "songs play out like journal entries in which the country-pop phenom lets it all out in delicious, narrative-driving detail."

Taylor plans to tour in support of Speak Now, and is currently slated to play 85 shows in 18 countries in 2011. Her 15-month, 107-date Fearless 2009 / 2010 Tour sold out arenas and stadiums in 88 cities in five countries spanning four continents.

Fans can take a look inside Taylor's Speak Now album – from the recording, to performances, to the behind-the-scenes of release week – on Thanksgiving night, when NBC will air the one-hour primetime special "Taylor Swift – Speak Now." The program will follow Taylor on her journey from New York City to Los Angeles through interviews, events, and all the in-the-moment experiences of a four-time Grammy winner releasing brand new music, as well as showcase multiple one-of-a-kind performances.

Speak Now artwork is available for download at: www.taylorswift.com/media-page and a Deluxe Edition of Speak Now, featuring bonus tracks and video content, is available exclusively at Target.

SOURCE Big Machine Records