Alibaba signs Taylor Swift to perform at 11.11 sales gala

Alibaba has just signed up the biggest global talent act yet for its 11.11 Countdown Gala in Shanghai.

And lest anyone forget the Singles Day origins of 11.11, it's none other than the pop sensation who brought us hits like We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Bad Blood, Look What You Made Me Do, I Knew You Were Trouble, You Need to Calm Down and Shake It Off. 

In an Alizila blog post, the ecommerce giant confirmed Taylor Swift will be joining a lineup of global and local celebrities performing at Shanghai's Mercedes Benz Arena, which so far includes G.E.M., Hua Chenyu, Kana Hanazawa, Ju Jingyi, Li Ronghao, Luo Yunxi, Jackson Yee, Zhang Jie and Zhang Yixing.

The full lineup, Alibaba, says, will be released closer to the event, which will be broadcast live by Youku, Shanghai Dragon TV and Zhejiang TV.

While the 11.11 gala has attracted star talent in the past—including singers like Mariah Carey and Pharrell Williams, actors like Nicole Kidman and Scarlett Johansson and sports stars such as David Beckham, Maria Sharapova and Kobe Bryant—signing Swift takes Alibaba's annual shopping festival to a new level of star power since the introduction of the countdown gala in 2015. 

Swift’s latest album Lover has become China’s most-consumed international full-length album since its August release, selling more than a million units in sales and downloads in its first week of release, according to Universal Music Group.

Every year, the 11.11 event has outperformed previous years on many different levels and on this, it's 11th year, Alibaba is expecting about 100 million more people to take part, the blog post said, to more than 500 million users total. 

Swift is no stranger to lending her voice to mass retail therapy, having performed for Amazon Prime Day in July this past summer—exclusively for Amazon Prime members, although video cuts of the concert are still circulating on YouTube. Not everyone has been a fan of 'star-studded mega-festivals of capitalism', with The Guardian lamenting "Taylor Swift at the Amazon Prime Day concert was our terrible future, now".  

Haters gonna hate. 

Taylor Swift performs at Amazon Music's Prime Day concert, July 2019. (Source: The Amazon blog Day One).