TAYLOR SWIFT’S ‘RED’ DEBUTS AT NO. 1, HAS BIGGEST FIRST WEEK SALES SINCE 2002

A big, fat congrats to Taylor Swift. She has made history — again — as her new album ‘Red’ topped the Billboard charts this week, surprising absolutely no one, especially those who pay attention to this kind of stuff. However, she sold over 1.21 million copies of the album — and according to the stat keepers at the music biz trade, that tally is more than any album has sold in a week since 2002. That’s a 10-year gap, closed by Swifty and ‘Red.’ Eminem‘s ‘The Eminem Show’ was the last album to achieve that accolade, moving 1.322 million its first week in stores. So Swift and her new album have done things on the Billboard charts that haven’t been done in years. She’s a true iconoclast. Even more impressive is the fact that ‘Red’ is just the 18th album in like, ever, to sell a million copies in one week. Actually, it’s the 18th album to do so since 1991, which is when SoundScan was installed to track sales.