In the News
( 6 stories between 7th November 2008 and 3rd November 2010 )Swift's 'Speak Now' Breaks A Million
Nov, 3 2010
Taylor Swift's third album Speak Now is a record-breaker: according to Billboard, it's the fastest selling album for nearly six years. Speak Now sold 1,047,000 copies in its first week, making it the first album to sell over a million copies in a single week since Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III sold 1,006,000 in June 2008. Swift's total hasn't been bettered since 50 Cent's Tha Massacre sold 1,141,000 in its first week way back in March 2005.
It's an even bigger achievement when the shrinking of the record industry over the last decade is taken into account. The highest-ever single week sales -- at least, since reliable figures were made available through Nielsen Soundscan in 1991 -- were for *NSync's No Strings Attached, which sold 2,416,000 in a single week in March 2000. But American music fans bought a total of 943m albums that year, compared with a total of 373m in 2009. So while the market has shrunk to under 40% of its size then, Speak's sales are 43% of No Strings's.
Speak Now also represents the biggest single sales week of any female artist since 2000, when Britney Spears' Oops! I Did It Again hit No.1 with 1,319,000 sales. Again, taking the huge drop in overall sales into consideration, Swift's achievement is relatively bigger than Spears's.
Taylor's Confessional Concept
Jul, 23 2010
Country fans are not known for embracing the concept album format, as Chris Gaines can testify: Garth Brooks’ alter-ego never appeared again after his first album crawled to two million sales just two years after the diamond-certified Brooks release Sevens.
But current country-pop sweetheart Taylor Swift is not daunted by the challenge and is planning a concept album of her own. Swift has announced that her keenly anticipated third album will be dedicated to the people she met during her speedy and dizzying ascent to the heights of stardom. “In life you have a lot of situations that pop up and people come into your life and sometimes you don't get to tell them what you wish you would have told them,” she said during an internet broadcast. “This album is my opportunity to do that. Track by track, each song is a different confession to a different person.”
First single "Mine" will emerge on August 16, and an extensive world tour is planned in support of Speak Now, which is due for release on October 25.
Taylor's Grammy Performance Under Scrutiny
Feb, 7 2010
Taylor Swift's warbling performance at the Grammys last weekend still seems to be overshadowing the fact that she won four awards, including 'Album of the Year' for Fearless.
After a blitz of blog criticism, Scott Borcheta, CEO of her record label Big Machine, defended her in an interview with the Associated Press. "She is the voice of this generation. This is not American Idol. This is not a competition of getting up and seeing who can sing the highest note. This is about a true artist and writer and communicator."
Unsurprisingly, American Idol first series winner Kelly Clarkson took umbrage at that comment. In a typically sensible blog post, she said "I understand defending your artist... because I have done the same in the past for artists I like, including Taylor, so you might see why its upsetting to read you attacking American Idol for producing simply vocalists that hit 'the high notes'... You forgot to mention we generally hit the 'right' notes as well. Every artist has a bad performance or two and that is understandable, but throwing blame will not make the situation at hand any better."
