Taylor Marks Her 23rd Birthday With MTV World Premier of Her 23rd Music Video
This week, 6-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift spends her 9th consecutive week at #1 on the Billboard Country Songs chart with her global #1 smash “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” the lead single from her Triple-Platinum album RED. This sets Billboard’s all-time record for most weeks at #1 on the country chart by a female artist. Previously, Country Music Hall of Famer Connie Smith spent eight weeks at the top with “Once A Day” in 1964. “Never Ever” was also a monumental pop hit, topping Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, iTunes charts around the globe, and selling more than 2.6 million downloads in the U.S.
In the six weeks since its first week debut with U.S. sales in excess of 1.2 million albums (music’s highest weekly sales number in more than a decade), RED (released on Big Machine Records) has dominated the album sales charts, spending every week at #1 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart, and remaining at #1 or #2 on the all-genre Top 200 Albums chart. In addition to its U.S. Triple-Platinum certification, RED has reached #1 at iTunes in 42 countries, and total sales of RED outside of the U.S. have now topped 1.1 million albums.
Singles from RED are impacting radio charts in several formats, with new single “I Knew You Were Trouble.”(currently at #2 all-genres on iTunes), making big jumps on the CHR/Top 40 (#23-#17) and Hot AC (#29-#21) charts, with Most Increased airplay at both. “Begin Again” is at #14 and climbing the Country airplay chart. This week’s international chart highlights from RED include 3 songs in the Top 30 in the U.K., #1 at A/C in Canada, a Top 10 in Australia, and the #1 international album in Japan.
MTV will world premiere Taylor’s 23rd music video, the clip for “I Knew You Were Trouble.” at 4:40 p.m. ET this Thursday, December 13th, Taylor’s 23rd birthday. The video will then go into rotation across all MTV channels at 5 p.m. the same day. Leading up to Thursday’s premiere, MTV will roll out new video assets every day at MTV.com, and on Wednesday (12/12), MTV’s Sway will interview Taylor as part of Viacom’s “Big and Best of 2012” and will exclusively premiere the video’s trailer.
Over the weekend, more shows were put on sale for Taylor’s 2013 The RED Tour, with shows selling out across North America, including stadiums in Vancouver and Winnipeg and two recently added additional shows Los Angeles’ STAPLES Center. The RED Tour is currently slated to include 12 stadium stops, for a total of 63 shows in 45 cities in 29 states and 3 provinces in 2013. A complete listing of tour dates, including future onsale information, is available at www.taylorswift.com.
Last week, nominations were announced for the 55t Annual Grammy Awards, and Taylor earned nods in three categories: Record of the Year (for “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”), Best Country Duo/Group Performance and Best Song Written for Visual Media (both for “Safe & Sound,” featuring The Civil Wars, from “The Hunger Games”).
Taylor is currently in Europe for a live performance this weekend on top German entertainment show “Schlag den Raab.” Later this month, she will perform live in Times Square, ringing in 2013 as the headliner of ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.”
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