Taylor Swift passes a million US sales with new album

The country singer Taylor Swift has reached the top of the US charts with her new album Speak Now, it has sold the most copies in a single week since March 2005. Taylor Swift is only the 16th person to have sold more than one million albums in a week since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991. Taylor now holds the highest number of record sales since 50 Cents The Massacre reached number one. Experts had predicted that Taylors album would only sell up to 900,000 copies in total. The last artist to sell more than a million copies in a single week was rapper Lil Wayne in 2008 with his album Tha Carter III, this launched at number one. Despite the achievement of Taylor Swift, the sales record is still with NSYNC, whose album No Strings Attached reached 2.4 million copies sold in 2000. The album from Swift is the second largest sales week of any country album since 1991, coming second to Gath Brooks 1998 effort Double Live. Other artists who have sold more than one million albums in a week include Lil Wayne, Norah Jones, Limp Bizkit, Whitney Houston, Garth Brooks, Usher, Backstreet Boys, Eminem and N Sync twice. The Speak Now album for Swift is her second number one album, with Fearless topping the charts in 2008.