Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Taylor Swift Joins 'The One Million Club'

Taylor Swift did something which I thought would never happen again, her third album "Speak Now" sold 1,047,000 copies on its first week on sale in the US, as reported by Billboard.com. The first album to do so since 2008 with Lil Wayne's The Carter III. This is really an astonishing feat because the sales climate has dwindled over the years and 2010 saw historical low sales but Swift defied the odds and managed to overcome industry trends. At first I thought she would 'only' sell around 500k since her lead single "Mine" was not that big of a hit (compared to "Love Story") plus the sales climate in the US is weaker compared to wo years ago. but she proved me wrong and I'm glad she did. "Fearless" was really a successful era for her, she did not alienate her country fan base and earned new fans on both mainstream pop and adult contemporary genres (and also the 'Disney' crowd of tweens and teens). She's really charismatic I must say. As a chart geek, it's just great to see an album selling 1 million in a week again. Although I guess over all sales will still be down compared to last year because the #2 album (Sugarland) is estimated to sell just around 86k but Speak Now's massive sales will offset a bigger drop from last year, the drop will be likely around 5% (as opposed to the usual 10-15% weekly drop). I will write more about that tomorrow.

"Speak Now" is the 16th album to sell over a million copies i n a single week. Here is the full list which is topped by 'N SYNC. If you'll notice most of these one million-single week series were released in the early 200s where album sales was at its peak.

1 4/8/2000 No Strings Attached 'N Sync 2,415,859
2 8/11/2001 Celebrity 'N Sync 1,879,955
3 6/10/2000 The Marshall Mathers LP Eminem 1,760,049
4 12/9/2000 Black & Blue Backstreet Boys 1,591,191
5 6/15/2002 The Eminem Show Eminem 1,321,799
6 6/3/2000 Oops...I Did It Again Britney Spears 1,319,193
7 1/6/2001 1 The Beatles 1,258,667
8 3/19/2005 The Massacre 50 Cent 1,140,638
9 6/5/1999 Millennium Backstreet Boys 1,133,505
10 4/10/2004 Confessions Usher 1,096,213
11 12/5/1998 Double Live Garth Brooks 1,085,373
12 1/2/1993 The Bodyguard Soundtrack 1,061,000
13 11/4/2000 Chocolate Starfish Limp Bizkit 1,054,511
14 11/13/2010 Speak Now Taylor Swift 1,047,000
15 2/28/2004 Feels Like Home Norah Jones 1,022,149
16 6/28/2008 Tha Carter III Lil' Wayne 1,005,545

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