Still three months away from the October 25 release of Taylor Swift’s third album, Speak Now, and already the pressure is on. Although her label, Big Machine Records, is forecasting first-week sales of 750,000, which would put it just ahead of 2010’s biggest debut so far, Eminem’s Recovery, which opened at 741,000, some industry executives are wondering if she could be the first artist to top the one-million-in-week-one mark since Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III’s 1,005,545 seven-day total in June of 2008.
It feels like if anybody can do it now, she could be the one. She has the sales base and the heat from the last two albums. And with all the amazing things she has going on, she is as likely as anybody to reach a million units, especially with the efforts of Big Machine and Universal behind her.”