The “CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” TV special aired last night, and just-so-happened to feature Taylor Swift’s very first performance of her new single “Mine”.

The last time we saw Tay-Tay lighting up the stage was during her off-key Grammy’s performance with Stevie Nicks, that ended up leaving most people wondering whether she could even sing or not. Luckily Taylor’s sake, she made up for it with this rendition of “Mine”, hitting most of the notes just as they are on the studio version. She’s clearly no Carrie Underwood when it comes to vocals, but seeing that she can carry a song live (that she solely wrote) while playing an instrument and engaging an audience, deserves some props.

As of this week, “Mine” is officially back in the top ten of the Hot 100, climbing from 14-9. The slight rebound is probably due to the song’s music video being released last week, but with some more performance and increased radio play, “Mine” will probably be able to linger within the top twenty for a while to come.

American’s Sweetheart Taylor Swift had a huge strategy set-up for the release of her new music video, “Mine”. The country-pop princess was set to premiere the clip simultaneously on CMT, MTV, VH1 and MTV International, in a massive, global, cross-platform event. She also had a live CMT special booked, in which she was going to talk about the video in front of a studio audience, answer questions, reveal special behind-the-scenes footage, and then of course, premiere the video itself.

Unfortunately for Tay-Tay, some bastard has gone and leaked the damn thing online two days early. Bad news for Tay-Tay, but it’s here, it happened, so let’s just watch it.

Reuniting with her “Fiteen”/”You Belong with Me” director, Roman White, the “Mine” video gives you exactly what you’d expect after hearing the song. Taylor meets some guy, they fall in love, sit on the beach, get married, have a fight, have a baby, and live happily every after. Sorry to ruin it for you, but it’s not like you didn’t know that’s what was going to happen. The video actually follows the song so closely, that most of the scenes are just direct enactments of the lyrics.

“Do you remember we were sittin’ there by the water.” Taylor and her beau sit by the water.

“You say we’ll never make my parents mistakes.” Flashback to Taylor’s parents fighting.

“You were in college workin’ part-time, waitin’ tables.” Cut to Taylor’s boyfriend waitin’ tables.

“I ran out cryin’, and you followed me out into the street.” Taylor runs out crying as her boyfriend follows her out into the street.

You get the gist of it. It is a very cute video, though. Maybe even adorable.

“Mine” has been a big success since hitting iTunes two weeks ago, initially debuting at #3 before falling slightly to #8 last week. I’m sure now that the video is out and radio have had more time to get used to the song that we’ll see it hanging around for quite a while.

Now, before Taylor goes and releases her third album, Speak Now, this October, she better plug up her little leakage problem. Firstly, the “Mine” single was leaked two weeks early, and now the music video has followed suit. At this rate we’ll all be listening to the album by the end of the week.

America’s Sweetheart Taylor Swift has released the official artwork for her upcoming third album, Speak Now. The cover is like a half-painting, half-photo, and I can’t decide whether I love it or hate it yet. Maybe, I’m just indifferent?

The album will hit stores on October 25, but it’ll be available to pre-order in less than two days.

Besides releasing her big, purple album portrait thingy, Taylor is also gearing up for the premiere of her new music video “Mine”. It won’t just be your run-of-the-mill video premiere either — Taylor will release the video on CMT, MTV, VH1 and MTV International in a huge, global cross-platform event on Aug. 27.

CMT and CMT.com will unveil it first in a live special called “CMT Premieres: Taylor Swift ‘Mine,’”, which will feature Taylor in front of a live studio audience, talking about the filming process and showing off exclusive behind-the-scenes footage.

A new still from the video was released today, which shows Taylor and her love interest playing with some baby. I assume it’s going to be one of those video’s that follows them throughout their lives, going from high school students to a married couple with kids, and eventually divorce court after Taylor catches her husband in bed with the mailman.

Taylor Swift crashes the Billboard Hot 100 this week with her new single “”Mine”, which narrowly misses out on the top spot by debuting at No. 3, with 297,000 copies sold. Ahead of Taylor on the charts is Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” at #2, and Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” which tops the Hot 100 for it’s fourth consecutive week, and also moves from 2-1 on the Airplay chart.

While Taylor’s debut at No. 3 is nothing to look down on, there is a strong chance that the country-pop princess could’ve landed a #1 debut if “Mine” hadn’t leaked online unexpectedly almost two weeks prior to it’s official release. The early leakage not only threw planned promotional strategies out the window, but also forced Swift’s label Big Machine to rush “Mine” to iTunes on a Wednesday — two-and-a-half days into the tracking sales period. So, while Eminem & Taio Cruz may have had the clear edge on the charts when it comes to airplay, Taylor — who topped the digital songs chart this week — had only 4-and-a-half days on the market, as opposed to her competition who had the full seven day week.

We’ll have to see over the coming weeks if Taylor can manage to nab her first number one single. At the moment, her main competition is probably “Dynamite”, which has not only just dethroned “Mine” from the top of  iTunes, but is also rapidly increasing in airplay; climbing 8-5 on the Radio Songs chart.

Elsewhere on the Hot 100, Linkin Park’s new single “The Catalyst” posts a respectable debut of No. 35 with 60,000 copies sold.

Unfortunately, Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” has lost a little steam on the charts this week, dropping from 7-9 due to a decline in digital sales of almost 20%.

The full Billboard chart will be released later today.

After Taylor Swift’s new single “Mine” leaked online twelve days early, her record label Big Machine were forced to rush it to iTunes and radio early. Within five hours it had already topped US iTunes.

Unconfirmed reports are even speculating that this could be the fastest rise to #1 in iTunes history.

This is basically even bigger than when Britney’s “3″ shot to number one with no promotion. Insane! I think we could see “Mine” top the Hot 100 pretty soon.

Taylor’s third album Speak Now is due October 25th, and has already been predicted to sell upwards of 750,000 in it’s first week.

In other news, the first official performance of “Mine” will be at the CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock on Sept. 1.

“Do you remember we were sittin’ there by the water…”

The most anticipated single of the year (one of then, at least) has now arrived. America’s sweetheart Taylor Swift returns today with “Mine”, the first single from her much-hyped third album Speak Now.

The song has Taylor singing about a boy (of course), but this time she’s traded in the fairytales for the harsh realities of a real relationship – tearful fights, emotional baggage and unpaid bills. “Mine” showcases Taylor a more mature Taylor, who seems to have finally hit puberty and gone from a little girl to a young woman.

Don’t worry though; it still has all the elements of a classic Taylor song. A strong narrative, sincerity, accessibility and an anthemic catchy-as-fuck chorus.

I’ve never been much of a Taylor fan at all except for about two songs (love “Fifteen” to death), but “Mine” has fully converted me, and I may just be one of those projected 750,000 people picking up her new album when it hits stores on October 25.

01 Mine (Click Here if player doesn’t work)

Country-pop princess Taylor Swift has released the official artwork for her new single “Mine”. The song wont be sent to radio until early August, but station KILT have already had the first listen, and posted a review of the track up on their website.

“Mine” is an uptempo song that’s unmistakably Taylor. It’s a boy/girl song, sort of like “Love Story,” but a much more realistic look at a relationship. It shows Taylor’s growth and maturity over the 2 years since she released Fearless, but still maintains Taylor’s ability to tell a story with an instantly memorable hook.

In the song, Taylor is a girl who always avoided love and then finds herself in a great relationship. Here’s a line from the chorus: “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter / You are the best thing that’s ever been mine”

“Mine” has a big chorus, and is very singable – like all great Taylor Swift songs.

Ugh, I’m sick of it already!

Regardless of what you think of America’s sweetheart, you can’t deny the fact that her upcoming album Speak Now is most likely the most highly-anticipated release of the year. Though not due until October 25th, Billboard have already officially predicted about a minimum of 750,000 in first week sales, with a possibility that the disc could be the first since Lil’ Wayne’s Carter III to top first week sales of 1 million copies.

I’ll be willing to give the record a spin if Taylor has matured a little, but if it’s all fairy tales and rainbows then she can forget it.

Any female artists that are planning to drop new albums in late October better change their release dates ASAP, because country-pop princess Taylor Swift today announced via Ustream that her third studio album ‘Speak Now‘ will hit stores worldwide on October 25.

Explaining the ‘Speak Now’ title, Taylor told fans: “track by track, each song is a different confession to a different person.”

The 14-track LP will be preceded by the first single “Mine”, due out on August 16. The album will then be followed up with a world tour at a later date.

To refresh your memory, Taylor’s last album Fearless (including the re-release) was the highest selling album of 2009 in the States, selling 592k in it’s opening week and eventually going 6x Platinum. It also earned Taylor 4 Grammy Awards, as well as pretty much every other major award of 2009.

There was a bit of a backlash against the 20-year-old towards the end of the Fearless era when people criticized her for being overexposed and a poor vocalist, but she was smart enough to lay low for a few months, and now I think the general public are hungry to have her back.

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: Late 2010 is going to be a blood bath amongst the ladies. It’s going to be some seriously stiff competition with Avril Lavigne, Shakira, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift all going at it. Some smaller females like Ciara, Nicki Minaj and Kelly Rowland also have discs due out, and Keri Hilson and Leona Lewis are a possibility too (though they’d be best advised to wait). I absolutely can’t wait to see who emerges victorious and who crumbles under the pressure.

The annual CMT Music Awards (Country music’s version of the VMA’s) were held today in Nashville, Tennessee, and all of country music’s biggest stars were out to celebrate the big event.

Leading the pack was of course, Carrie Underwood, who looked pretty in pink as she took home two awards on the night; ‘Video of the Year’ for “Cowboy Casanova” and ‘CMT performance of the Year’ for her tearjerker “Temporary Home”.

Following Underwood was Miranda Lambert, who in addition to topping the country charts with her latest single “The House That Built Me”, also took home the ‘Female Video of the Year’ for her hit “White Liar”.

Also in attendance was American Idol alum Kellie Picker, who failed to take home any awards. She has nothing to worry about though: Forbes recently placed her at No.4 on their list of the top ten highest earning Idols, with Kellie raking in $4.3 million in the past year thanks to touring revenue and royalty cheques.

And who could forget little ol’ Taylor Swift? She didn’t win anything though. *Kanye Shrug*

As two of the biggest winners of the night at the Academy of Country Music Awards, country queens Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood brought the house down when they teamed up together to perform a cover of the 1970′s classic “Travellin’ Band” with Brad Paisley on guitar and an appearance from the original performer of the song, John Fogerty.

The performances didn’t stop there though. Miranda returned to give a stunning performance of her new single “The House That Built Me”, which resulted in a Standing O from Nicole Kidman, and Carrie came out to deliver a flawless rendition of her #1 hit “Temporary Home”.

The Carrie video also features her tearful acceptance speech after being presented with the Triple Crown award by Reba McEntire.

Once again I just need to mention how much better the ACMA’s were than the Grammy’s.

Also hitting the stage was the biggest loser of the night Taylor Swift, who was on her best behavior after blowing it with her highly criticized performance at the Grammy’s, pulling out all the stops for her performance of “Change”. Tay-Tay came out in a cage suspended above the audience, had a costume change, crowd surfed and actually sung very well, proving that when she puts in the effort she can actually hold her own on stage.

Great work all round from some very talented young ladies!

Though it hasn’t officially been announced yet it looks like ladies man John Mayer has selected “Half of My Heart” as the third official single from his chart topping album Battle Studies. The laid back, country tinged track has started receiving adds on Hot AC formats and it was just officially listed under the new music section of AllAccess.com.

The song is almost guaranteed to find some success since it happens to feature country-pop princess Taylor Swift, but it’s a little hard to take her ‘feature’ seriously since she literally just coos two lines towards the end and then adds in a few soft harmonies in the background.

However despite Taylors very swift appearance “Half of My Heart” is one of the stand outs from Battle Studies and it should do quite well on the AC charts, with some potential for pop and country crossover to.

Check it out below.

If you’re starting to get sick of seeing Taylor Swift everywhere you look then you can breathe a sigh of relief, because the head of her record label Scott Borchetta has announced that the singer will be taking some time out of the spotlight in a bid to avoid over-exposure.

In fact until the Academy of Country Music Awards in April the only glimpses of Taylor we should be seeing will be her on stage performing on her sold-out Fearless World Tour.

The whole laying low strategy is part of a plan to have Taylor return with a bang for the release of her third album, which once again according to her label is coming along swimmingly.

“She was on an amazing writing spree through December and January, and we were able to go in and cut all those things,” Borchetta says. “If she writes something great between now and July, it will go on the record. She’s been extraordinarily prolific the last six months.” {source}

The album is currently due out at towards the end of the year with the first single scheduled to hit radio in early September.

Let’s hope that Taylor has finally overcome her obsession with fairytales and princesses on this next album.

Taylor Swift is the top selling digital artist of all time and the youngest ever recipient to win a Grammy for album of the year. She’s also sold over ten million albums in the US alone and has had a whopping 23 songs chart in the top 40.