It News: Taylor Swift's 'Never Ever' Sets Download Record

August 22, 2012

Taylor Swift's 'Never Ever' Sets Download Record

Swift's 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' sold 623,000 paid downloads in its first week.
By Gil Kaufma

Aug 22 2012
Taylor Swift did it. The singer who seems to reach new high points with every move set another record  this week when her latest breakup single, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,"  set a high-water download mark for female artists.

Billboard reported that for the week ending August 19, Swift had the biggest digital sales week ever for a song by a woman thanks to 623,000 paid downloads, according to figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan.
The song will debut at #1 on Billboard's Digital Songs chart. Swift easily bested the previous top sales weeks for a woman, which was set by Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" in 2010 (610,000) and Lady Gaga's "Born This Way," which notched the record for the biggest first-week sales by a woman last year with 448,000.
She also came within 13,000 of the all-time single-week digital sales mark, held by Flo Rida's "Right Round," which debuted at #1 on sales of 636,000 in February 2009. She threw some love out to her fans for pushing her over the top, tweeting, "I want to thank you guys for giving me my biggest first week ever with 'We Are Never.' I can't stop smiling. You guys are amazing!!"

The tune, which will appear on Swift's upcoming album, Red,  becomes just the seventh single to sell more than 500,000 digital copies in one week. Swift will be busy promoting the song and the album in the next few weeks, including the TV debut  of the tune at the September 6 MTV Video Music Awards.

Swift joins previously announced performers Green Day, Pink, Alicia Keys and One Direction on the Kevin Hart-hosted show.

"When I was coming up with the name for this album, it seemed crazy because it was really simple," Swift said. "I wrote a song called 'Red,' and thinking about what that song means to me and all the different emotions on this album they're all pretty much about the tumultuous, crazy, insane, intense, semi-toxic relationships I've experienced in the last two years and all those emotions fanning from intense love, intense frustration, intense jealousy, confusion, all of that in my mind, all those emotions are red. There's nothing in between, there's nothing beige about those feelings and so I called my record that."

In addition, Swift will join Pink and Alicia Keys on VH1's "Storytellers"  in November.

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