Lady Gaga sells over a million, slays Taylor Swift

Lady Gaga topped the million mark in first week sales for Born This Way, moving 1,108,000 copies. That means the Mother Monster beat out Taylor Swift, the last pop star to top a million, when she moved 1,047,000 of Speak Now.

But is Gaga's sales figure really as impressive as the one by Wyomissing's own country-pop princess? Hardly. For one thing, Born This Way had an extra day to reach the magic number you see written in this headline, since it came out on Monday May 23 rather on Tuesday, when most new albums are released. And more to the point, Gaga sold Born on Amazon.com for a mere 99 cents, offering a deep discount in order to drive her numbers up. It's been estimated that Amazon sold 440,000, or about two-fifths of the pop provocateur's total.

Not that Gaga's total is in any way shabby. The 1.047 number is the most anybody's sold since 50 Cent did 1.14 million of The Massacre in 2005. And Stefani Germanotta also sold over a million copies of her second full-length album in the rest of the world, pushing her to over 2 million total already. Here's my review of the album from last week's Inquirer. Below, the "Born This Way" video.

Previously: Amanda Shires at the Grape Room