Sometimes, nice girls do finish first.
Country charmer Taylor Swift’s new album, Speak Now, sold more than 1 million albums in its first week, making it the year’s biggest debut by far (second goes to Eminem’s Recovery, which sold 741,000) and nearly became the best-selling opening week for any female artist ever. Speak Now fell just behind Britney Spears’ 1.31 million sales for Oops … I Did It Again.
And keep in mind that Spears set the bar way back in 2000—when folks were still buying actual albums. You know, at places called “record stores.”
In the 21st century, when more than half of all music sales are made online and the concept of buying a full album is becoming increasingly anachronistic, Swift’s achievement is all the more remarkable.
“It’s always been a rarity,” Scott Borchetta, president of Big Machine Records, told MTV. “How many artists in the SoundScan era [beginning in 1991] have done a million? Shania [Twain] never did it. Garth [Brooks] did it once. I hate to say it, but … it could be the last time.”
Plugged In has a few reservations about Speak Now. The squeaky-clean country crooner makes some allusions to male-female intimacy … watching an apparent lover sleep, leading someone upstairs, that sort of thing. But when you compare Swift’s work with, say, Lady Gaga or Rihanna, Taylor’s work is pretty sweet, relatively innocent … and musically, it’s awfully good, too.
We often bemoan the fall of the teen celebrity—how once-innocent starlets like Spears and Miley Cyrus move in directions that make parents cringe. It’s strange how, in this fallen world of ours, becoming an “adult” in the celebrity spotlight often carries with it expectations of engaging in immature sexual escapades. And many of our stars not only meet those expectations, but surpass them.
We can’t say what Swift’s future holds. But frankly, I find it pretty refreshing that this girl is becoming an adult star without engaging in “adult” antics. And even more refreshing, she’s being rewarded for it.
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