Swift

Looks as if Taylor Swift is too busy to date these days: As the days have grown shorter, she and Conor Kennedy have reportedly broken off their summer fling. "They quietly parted ways a while ago," a Swift friend told Us Weekly about the 22-year-old singer and her 18-year-old high school student flame. "It was just a distance thing. No hard feelings. They're fine. " Well that's good news, given Swift's penchant for writing songs when she's vexed by exes - think "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," her catchy hit from the new album "Red," which dropped Monday.  Swift and Kennedy, who were spotted together all over Hyannis Port, Mass., and elsewhere in July and August, haven't seen each other for more than a month, the friend told the mag . "With her promotion for 'Red,' she has no time off until the end of the year.

The Taylor Swift release-week blitz continues with the arrival of the video for her new single “Begin Again,” the closing track from her album “Red.” The record was released Monday, and Billboard has projected the album will top sales of 1 million copies in its first week of release. In the “Begin Again” video, she strolls the banks of the Seine River and the streets of Paris as she sings of a promising new relationship, and how it contrasts with a previous romance. I think it's strange that you think I'm funny 'Cuz he never did I've been spending the last 8 months thinking all love ever does Is break and burn and end But on a Wednesday in a cafe I watched it begin again.

Taylor Swift may never, ever be getting back together with a certain beau, but she seems strongly positioned to getting back above the 1 million first-week sales mark with her new album. According to her label, Big Machine Records, "Red" bolted out of the starting gate with 262,000 copies sold the first day on iTunes alone. Big Machine noted that the record went to No. 1 on iTunes' all-genre Top Albums chart just 36 minutes after it was released at 12:01 a.m. Monday. The label also said  “Red” was responsible for more than 4½ million individual iTunes song downloads to date in the U.S. Swift's song “Everything Has Changed” also shot to No. 1 on iTunes' Top Songs chart, one of 13 tracks from the album to reach the chart's Top 20. Swift's fourth studio collection also tops Amazon.com's list of bestselling albums, having spent 61 days in the Top 100, based on pre-release orders.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of Oct. 21 - 27 in PDF format This week's TV Movies     CBS This Morning Bill O'Reilly; Tom Wolfe. (N) 7 a.m. KCBS Today John Grisham; Tony Bennett; Jamie-Lynn Sigler; Jaleel White. (N) 7 a.m. KNBC Good Morning America Taylor Swift; Pat Houston. (N) 7 a.m. KABC Rachael Ray Hayden Panettiere. (N) 8 a.m. KCAL Live With Kelly and Michael Gerard Butler; Krysten Ritter. (N) 9 a.m. KABC The View The Houston family; Tony Bennett; Juan Luis Guerra.

The promotional blitz for Taylor Swift's fourth studio album “Red” reached its climax early Monday morning as many Walgreens and other brick-and-mortar retailers that stay open 24 hours a day took maximum advantage of the record's Oct. 22 release date, allowing her most ardent fans to start listening that much sooner. Those who hear it from beginning to end will be reminded again that Swift, at 22, is part of a generation of young musicians who still value the album form as something more than just a repository for potential hit singles, and instead strive to create an extended experience over the course of their songs.

A platinum artist many times over, singer Taylor Swift at 22 seems to be on top of the world. She's dating a Kennedy, earning millions, and has touched the lives of generations with her delicate lyrical sensibility and songs of love. She's a near-constant hot topic on the Internet whose existence is more closely watched than just about anyone's on the planet. And on “Red,” she's easing into this role. “Red” is Swift's fourth album since her breakout debut in 2006, and it's the most consistently surprising of the lot -- even if it reveals an artist whose success has most definitely gone to her head.

During the 13 months that Taylor Swift canvassed the globe on her 2011-12 "Speak Now" tour, she was joined onstage by a steady parade of celeb musician friends and admirers: Nicki Minaj and Justin Bieber in L.A., Usher in Atlanta, Brooks & Dunn's Ronnie Dunn in her home base of Nashville, Selena Gomez and James Taylor at Madison Square Garden in New York. On the surface, the guest appearances were simply a bonus for fans - a little something to generate extra sparks, Twitter and water cooler buzz about those shows.

Taylor Swift's "Red" isn't even out yet, and already advance singles have veered from cheerleader pop to hints of dubstep. But perhaps the new "State of Grace" stands the best chance of making the case for Swift's musical growth in the upcoming album. Swift debuted a piece of it Monday on "Good Morning America," and it instantly became the fourth single from her fourth album to hit No. 1 on iTunes. It has a strong U2 streak to it, with feedback- and echo-drenched guitars and some of her most for-the-rafters vocals yet. Despite "Red" being tipped as a "breakup album," this one is all love-struck optimism, a setting she's worked well in before.

It's a good bet that a fair amount of homework went undone Monday night for about 3,000 students from five Claremont colleges. Rather than hunkering down over their books, students piled into Pomona College's Bridges Auditorium and spent most of the evening with Taylor Swift, who used the opportunity to tape a new edition of “VH1 Storytellers.” In an unusually smooth television taping - there were few pauses and no stops for retakes -...

Dwight Howard's back was hurting last season. Badly. Then something else happened: He couldn't feel his left leg. "What a lot of people don't know is when I hurt my back, it affected my nerves to the point where my whole left leg just went dead basically," the Lakers center said Thursday. "I couldn't do a calf raise. " It's not a completely uncommon condition, because nerves run from the spine to the leg and a disk can impinge the whole root. But Howard needed about two months before he could lift his calf after undergoing back surgery in April.