Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 08/20/2012 at 3:47 PM News

The Popdust Files: taylor swift

Well, we were pretty sure Taylor Swift was gonna outsell the new Jake Owen single with her latest “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” but this…this is gonna be a big week for Taylor. HitsDailyDouble, one of the most reliable sales-figure predictor services out there, tweeted today about the sales figure that “Never Ever” was going to do in its first week, and the number is somewhat staggering:

The new @taylorswift13 breaks the single week sales record by a female artist, selling between 615-625k its first week twitter.com/HITSDD/status/…

— HITS Daily Double (@HITSDD) August 20, 2012

That 615-625k numerical range, if accurate, would easily give Taylor the best sales week, debut or otherwise, of anyone this year—for comparison’s sake, Justin Bieber had the best week up until this point, with 521k in the first week for “Boyfriend.” In fact, a figure in that range would give Taylor the best sales week for any female artist since digital sales began being tracked—the previous best being the 610k that Ke$ha sold of “Tik Tok” in early 2010—and would rank her second all-time, behind Flo Rida’s 636k sold of “Right Round” in its first week back in 2009.

Flo may have the all-time mark on Taylor, but will selling in the low 600k’s be enough for Swifty to unseat him at the top of the charts next week? We’re pretty confident that the answer is yes. Billboard reports that the song has made a strong debut on Airplay as well, landing in the top 20 of most relevant charts, including pop songs (#18) and country songs (#13, tied for the second-best country debut ever—so much for worries about the song being too pop). Unless “Whistle” makes an unexpected surge in just about every necessary category—and even if it does, probably—Taylor should be cleared for landing at #1, for the first Hot 100-topping hit of her career. wheeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE indeed.