Taylor Swift’s ‘Red’ Sells 1.2 Million Copies in First Week
Taylor Swift‘s new album Red has racked up the highest first-week sales of any album in a decade with more than 1.2 million copies, Billboard reports, which is more than enough to debut at Number One on the Billboard 200 albums chart. It’s the strongest sales week since Eminem’s The Eminem Show sold more than 1.3 million copies its first week in 2002.
Red makes Swift the only woman to have two million-selling weeks since SoundScan began keeping track of album sales in 1991. Her 2010 release Speak Now sold 1.047 million copies its first week. Red is the 18th album to sell a million copies in a single week since 1991, and it’s the second largest sales total for a female artist. Britney Spears holds the top spot with sales of 1.319 million for her 2000 album Oops! . . . I Did It Again.
Swift’s sales totals for Red include 465,000 copies on iTunes; 396,000 copies through Target, which had an exclusive deluxe version of the album with bonus songs and remixes; and 8,000 copies through Papa John’s Pizza, which sold the album on its own and as part of a large one-topping pizza combo.