Taylor Swift “Speak Now” Album Sells 1 Million Copies In First Week; Biggest Album Debut In Five Years

Take that, Beliebers! Taylor Swift’s new album had the biggest opening week of any LP released within the last five years.

The country-pop star sold 1,047,000 copies of her third album, Speak Now, last week. The album netted the largest sales week for an album since rapper 50 Cent’s sophomore set The Massacre debuted at No. 1 with 1,141,000 in March 2005 and shattered Lil Wayne’s place as the last artist to accomplish the feat. Weezy sold 1,006,000 The Carter III in June 2008.

There have only been 16 instances where an album sold at least a million copies in a week since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking music sales 19 years ago. Of course, the all-time record of 2,416,000 units sold in one week still belongs to ‘N Sync’s 2000 release No Strings Attached.

A few more Swifty Milestones to keep in mind: Speak Now boasted the second-largest sales week of any country album since 1991 and was the biggest week for any album by a woman since 2000, when Britney Spears’ Oops! I Did It Again hit No. 1 with 1,319,000 copies sold.