Big Machine Records 200
Executive producer: Scott Borchetta
Track listing: Fearless / Fifteen / Love Story / Hey Stephen / White Horse / You Belong to Me / Breathe / Tell Me Why / You’re Not Sorry / The Way I Loved You / Forever & Always / The Best Day / Change
November 29, 2008
11 weeks (non-consecutive)
Breaking up may be hard to do, to paraphrase the Neil Sedaka’s 1962 hit, but it can also help you garner a ton of publicity if you’re a celebrity. Just ask Taylor Swift. News that she’d been dumped by Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers broke just as her second album, Fearless, hit stores. The story was all over the Internet and celebrity-centered TV shows. It wasn’t like the singer-songwriter need the publicity, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
Prior to the album’s release, Swift appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and claimed that Jonas broke up with her in a 27-second phone call. Such heartbreak, it turned out, wasn’t only good for publicity, it provided fuel for much of the material on Fearless. Swift told Nekesa Mumbi Moody of the Associated Press, that she often shared her frustrations with her songwriting partner Liz Rose. “I walked into Liz’s house, and I said, ‘I can’t believe what’s going on right now, I’ve gotta tell you about this.’ I told her all about it,” says Swift. “She goes, ‘If you could say everything you were thinking to him right now, what would you start with?'”
Encouraged to unload, Swift did just that: “I would say to him, ‘I’m sick and tired of your attitude, I feel like I don’t even know you’ … and I just started rambling, and she was writing down everything that I was saying, and so, we turned it into a song.”
That song, “Tell Me Why,” made the final cut for Fearless, but it wasn’t the first time Swift shared her heartbreak in song. The striking blonde-haired singer/songwriter first gained attention with the song “Tim McGraw,” which isn’t a tribute to the country singer it’s named for, but rather a broken-hearted love letter to a former flame. That song, and other hits such as “Our Song” and “Teardrops on My Guitar,” helped push 2006 self-titled debut album to Number One of the Top Country Albums chart and number 5 on The Billboard 200. The album went on to sell more than 3 million copies.
Prior to the release of Fearless, Swift was getting plenty of media attention. She sang the National Anthem at the World Series, won a BMI Country Award for song of the year with “Teardrops on My Guitar,” performed with Def Leppard on a CMT special, and toured with Rascal Flatts.
All of that was a nice setup, but the ultimate payback came in the form of Fearless‘ opening-week sales numbers. The album sold 592,304 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the best opening week by a female artist to date in 2008 and the fourth best overall. In fact, she even bested the opening week of her ex, Joe and the Jonas Brothers, who sold 525,000 copies of A Little Bit Longer when that album hit stores in August.
Five weeks after initially topping the chart, Fearless made a return visit, knocking Britney Spears’ Circus from the summit. A week later it logged a third week at Number One, fending off hot debuts by Keyshia Cole and Jamie Foxx, and remained in the top spot through the holiday season. By late January 2009, Fearless had racked up seven non-consecutive weeks at the top, making her the first artist to top the chart for that span since Usher’s Confessisons spent nine weeks at the top in 2004.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of November 29, 2008
1. Fearless, Taylor Swift
2. David Archuleta, David Archuleta
3. Now That’s What I Call Music 29, Various artists
4. Thr33 Ringz, T-Pain
5. Twilight, Soundtrack