The obvious is upon us: Taylor Swift's new single "Shake It Off" is the biggest song of the week.
Billboard projects the instant hit will snag more than 475,000 U.S. downloads, 22 million airplay listens and a new record for streams (more than 8.1 million) in its first week, which ends Tuesday.
The most recent song to hit 475,000 downloads in its first week was Katy Perry's "Roar," which debuted with 557,000 in August 2013.
Swift launched her new song on a Yahoo! Live Stream last week, and also announced her new album, 1989, will be out Oct. 27.
Safe to say that this will be the autumn of Taylor Swift, and she's just getting started.
The "Shake It Off" video — criticized by some for racial insensitivity — has already soared past 25 million views on YouTube, and is basically a cinch for radio domination in the coming weeks.
One interesting biproduct of the new single will be its country airplay. As our own Ryan Book noted earlier today, the country brand is eager to hold onto Swift's popularity for as long as possible:
USA Today interviewed a representative from K102, a Minneapolis country music station, that has been putting "Shake It Off" into the rotation despite the audio suggesting otherwise. CMA tweeted "Good luck on your new venture" to Swift, no sarcasm intended, after hearing the new single. The tweet was later deleted, along with the implication that the performer was no longer "country."
It seems that 1989 will be Swift's "Black album," the moment when prickly metal fans deemed Metallica to be formally "sold out." The album itself certainly sold out...millions of copies, as will 1989. But how long will country music wait to let her go?
Taylor Swift is a tough pill for the country music industry to swallow...but an even tougher one to spit out.
No matter the genre, listeners will get a heavy dose of Swift for a long time to come. And if Billboard's numbers are accurate, people of all demographics are already getting a head start this week.
