It is now just about official–Taylor Swift’s eagerly-anticipated third album “Speak Now” cruised past the one million sales mark in its first week of release.
While final data is still pending, Hits Daily Double reported late Monday that the well-reviewed album’s opening total will indeed be in excess of one million.
Initial estimates from both Hits Daily Double and Billboard suggested an opening of at least 800-900,000. Because the album hit shelves on Monday, October 25 rather than on the traditional Tuesday, it was naturally going to be harder to use opening day sales figures to forecast for the entire week.
Assuming the report does not prove way off the mark, Swift represents the first artist to score a million opening week sales since Lil’ Wayne did so with “Tha Carter III” in 2008.
The challenge now will be for “Speak Now” to show the same longevity of predecessors “Fearless” and “Taylor Swift.” Swift’s previous albums had tremendous legs at retail, but it is worth noting that both benefited from steady success for her singles.
In the case of her self-titled debut, while “Tim McGraw” was a minor hit that first put her on the map, it was “Teardrops on My Guitar” (especially when a pop version was later released to top 40 radio), “Our Song” (her first country number one), “Picture to Burn” and “Should’ve Said No” that continued to carry sales.
While “Fearless” did not enjoy the same stream of hit singles, its opener “Love Story,” was far bigger than “Tim McGraw.” “White Horse” performed well on county charts for a period, and third single “You Belong with Me” emerged as her biggest mainstream hit and essentially became her signature song. “Fifteen” was a minor success, while “Fearless” never took off. Nonetheless, a deluxe re-release of the album kept the fire burning for a little while longer.
So far, “Speak Now”‘s lead single “Mine” has underwhelmed, but given the album’s million-plus sales week and non-stop buzz for Taylor Swift, it does not appear to have set her back. Her album will likely have some legs anyway, and if one or two tracks emerge as hit singles, this should continue to prove a wildly successful album for the country-pop crossover.
*Note: If one were to look up Taylor Swift’s discography on Wikipedia, he might get a skewed impression about the success of Swift’s singles. As with many top pop stars, individual tracks and promotional releases from her new album releases tend to sell extremely well on iTunes. Though that can often result in high Billboard Hot 100 debuts (the chart counts sales rather heavily), it does not necessarily mean the singles were/are “hits” when released as official/radio singles.
