Singer/songwriter Taylor Swift has solidified her position as one of the most important artists to emerge on the popular music scene this decade as her sophomore album, Fearless, debuted this morning in the #1 slot atop Billboard’s Top 200 Albums Chart, with sales of 592,304 copies in its first week in stores.
This is the largest opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of music, and the fourth biggest overall, behind Lil Wayne, AC/DC and Coldplay.With 129,046 copies sold digitally, Fearless is the biggest country digital album debut in the history of Nielsen’s Soundscan, and the 4th biggest digital album debut to date, behind only Coldplay, Jack Johnson, and Kanye West.Taylor, who writes all of her own material and co-produced her album, has the highest country sales debut of 2008 -- the only other country artists this year to debut at #1 on the Top 200 chart were Alan Jackson, George Strait and Kenny Chesney. Fearless is the highest sales debut for a female country artist since Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks’ 2002 album releases.
“White Horse,” a track from Fearless that was featured on the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy, will debut at #13 on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 singles chart this week, giving Taylor her 6th Top 20 debut of 2008. This breaks the all-time Billlboard record for the number of Top 20 debuts in a calendar year by any artist. In addition, Taylor’s 6 debuts and 7 total tracks on tomorrow’s charts each tie her with Hannah Montana for the most by a female artist in a single week. Of the 13 tracks on Fearless, 11 have now spent time on the Hot 100.Taylor reached another huge online milestone today, surpassing the 120 MILLION mark for music streams on MySpace, where she is consistently at the top of their highest ranking artists in all genres of music. Taylor has had more than 20 million MySpace streams in the past 10 days.
“Love Story,” the lead single from Fearless, is currently in its second week at #1 on both the Billboard and USA Today/Country Aircheck country radio charts, reaching a weekly radio audience of more than 40 million listeners. When Fearless was released last week, it secured the #1 slot at the top of iTunes all-genre Top Albums chart, with six songs placing in the mainstream Top 20. Taylor had 13 of the Top 15 songs on iTunes’ Top Country Songs chart, including the entire Top 10.
Fearless has already become Nashville’s most critically-acclaimed record this year, earning rave reviews from many of the nation’s top publications, including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Billboard, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Village Voice, Blender, People, Entertainment Weekly and The Associated Press.Taylor released her self-titled debut CD in 2006, it has since been certified triple-platinum (with sales of more than 3.5 million copies), and is currently the best-selling country title of 2008.
Taylor is the only female artist ever to have five consecutive Top 10 singles from a debut album on the Billboard country chart, and at the age of 17, she became the youngest person ever to single-handedly write and sing a number-one country single entirely on her own ("Our Song" spent 6 consecutive weeks at #1 atop Billboard's Country Singles Chart). She is the first female solo artist in country music history to write or co-write every song on a platinum-selling debut CD.
Lifeway Christian Stores has released a new Sawyer Brown Christmas CD titled "Rejoice". The CD is being released exclusively with Lifeway Christian Stores and can be found in Lifeway Christian stores now as well as on their website at http://www.lifeway.com/e2/shop/?R=824734. The album features 6 traditional tunes and two that Mark and Hobie wrote specifically for this album.
