No, Taylor Swift’s “ME! (featuring Brendon Urie)” did not match the opening day sales performance of previous lead single “Look What You Made Me Do.”
It did, however, deliver the biggest opening day sales performance for a song in 2019.
According to Hits Daily Double, “ME!” sold about 67K pure US downloads on Friday, April 26.
The aforementioned “Look What You Made Me Do” moved 252K first-day tracks in 2017. That single, of course, had several advantages. It launched in a better climate for pure sales, it represented her first lead single in three years (as opposed to a year-and-a-half), it launched concurrently with the pre-order for her next studio album, and it was the follow-up to a more successful, momentum-building album (“1989” vs. “reputation”).
In reporting on the story, Hits offers a comparison to a more recent high-profile lead single launch: Jonas Brothers’ “Sucker.” That song sold 43k copies on its first day of release.
