Quick Takes: Swift success for Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift’s pop-rock makeover with “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” has become a runaway late-summer hit. The single, in just three weeks of availability for purchase, has sold more than 1 million downloads.

With an additional 253,000 downloads purchased over the last week, the single has sold almost 1.2 million digital copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Swift’s latest is the top-selling digital single in the States this week, easily holding court over Maroon 5’s “One More Night,” the latter of which sold 193,000 copies and also just cracked the million download threshold. By comparison, Adam Levine’s band took 11 weeks to hit the mark.

Meanwhile, TobyMac’s “Eye on It” topped the Billboard album chart for the week with 69,000 copies sold. Billboard said it is the first Christian album since 1997 to hit No. 1.

—Todd Martens

Rappers mourn Chris Lighty

Hip-hop royalty including LL Cool J and Sean “Diddy” Combs packed a standing-room-only funeral chapel Wednesday to pay their respects to music-industry mogul Chris Lighty.

Mourners at the Manhattan funeral home also included Missy Elliott, Q-Tip, Russell Simmons, Busta Rhymes, 50 Cent and Grandmaster Flash.

The 44-year-old Lighty was found dead in his Bronx apartment last week with a gunshot wound to the head. The medical examiner ruled it a suicide.

Lighty had been a part of the hip-hop scene for decades, working with pioneers such as LL Cool J before starting his own management company, Violator. But he was in the midst of a divorce and had been having recent financial and personal troubles.

—Associated Press

CMA nominees are announced

Taylor Swift, Kenny Chesney, Brad Paisley, Blake Shelton and Jason Aldean were nominated Wednesday for the Country Music Assn.’s top honor as entertainer of the year,

an award to be handed out Nov. 1 at the 46th CMA Awards ceremony in Nashville.

But relative newcomer Eric Church, who received his first nomination last year, scored the most nominations this year with five, largely for his musical homage to rock star Bruce Springsteen: His song “Springsteen” is up for single, song and video of the year. His third CD, “Chief,” also is nominated for album of the year, and he’s up for male vocalist along with Shelton, Aldean, Keith Urban and Luke Bryan.

Shelton and his wife, singer Miranda Lambert, tallied four nominations apiece. Aldean, Swift, Chesney, Little Big Town and Dierks Bentley got three each.

—Randy Lewis

Paltrow works against cancer

Gwyneth Paltrow has mastered the day job. The Oscar winner is capable in both the stilettos of “Iron Man’s” Pepper Potts and in the herb garden she’s displayed on her lifestyle blog Goop.

So when given the chance to moonlight for a project like “Stand Up to Cancer,” the biennial televised fundraiser that utilizes an hour of commercial-free broadcasting across the big four networks and more than a dozen cable stations, she knew she couldn’t phone it in.

“When I do something, I want to actually do it, I want to commit and put my time in,” Paltrow said of her role as an executive producer for Friday’s 8 p.m. telecast from the Shrine Auditorium in L.A.

“I was really honored they asked me, and it’s been fun helping organize, asking people for favors and really getting involved.”

And it’s a pretty high-profile list of favors, with celebrities such as Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Justin Timberlake, Julia Roberts, Samuel L. Jackson and Emma Stone taking part.

Their efforts will include manning a media bank with phones, live video chats and other social media platforms to benefit the organization’s mission of raising funds for cancer treatment.

“I feel a lot of empathy for these patients and families,” said Paltrow, who lost her father, producer Bruce Paltrow, to oral cancer in 2002. “It’s wonderful to be involved in something that’s approaching research and doctors with a real proactivity, down to their distribution of funds.”

Paltrow is executive producing alongside Joel Gallen, whose resumé boasts the 9/11 telethon “America: A Time for Heroes.”

—Matt Donnelly

From Hogwarts to Whoville

A former publisher of the Harry Potter books is heading to the house of Dr. Seuss.

Barbara Marcus, who helped oversee the first six Potter stories at Scholastic Inc., has been named president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books.

The publisher announced Wednesday that she is immediately succeeding longtime Random House executive Chip Gibson.

Besides Dr. Seuss, Random House publishes such popular works as Christopher Paolini’s “Inheritance” cycle and Mary Pope Osborne’s “Magic Tree House” series.

Marcus worked more than 20 years at Scholastic before stepping down in 2005.

—Associated Press