Carrie Underwood Tops the Charts

Oof, on Thrice... I thought that they would sell somewhere in the 30k range for the first week. Sad Monday

 

That's uhhh...not great.

I've definitely been worried about Epitaph's promotional push. It's absolutely sad comparing the few thousand views the music video for "The Grey" has compared to the many million that "Black Honey" pulled in.

 

Probably because Black Honey is a stronger single that from what I recall wasn’t even initially planned to be a single. Their new album was a bit of a let down for me.

 

16k is good. It doubled Alkaline Trio's first week.

"The Grey" is doing really well on radio, making an impact at modern rock radio now. ("Black Honey" took off because of WWE. It's their biggest song in years.)

 

It's certainly not bad, (and I accidentally thought it said 13k on my first reading, darn my eyeballs), but I was hoping for a bigger first week precisely BECAUSE Black Honey was so big and made so many new Thrice fans.

Do you happen to recall TBEITBN's first week sales? I just did a cursory search and haven't found the numbers yet.

 

~21k

 

Wait. Who the hell would think Thrice would do 30k? That is bonkers.

TBE did 21k and that was with the hype of returning and Black Honey being pretty popular. Also, that number was better than both Beggars and M/m. In short, it was huge for them.

If you had that expectation, that’s on you for being completely irrational.

Thrice doing 16k is really solid and demonstrates that they have a decent floor of support.

This was nothing short of a win for them.

Edit: Thrice hasn’t done over 30k since Vheissu in 2006, and they have had five albums since then, but sure, let’s expect them to hit that number twelve years later when the music industry is worse off.

 

Agreed. My first thought was that it doubled Alkaline Trio a couple weeks ago.

 

Thrice has never really clicked with me but I've always listened. I think their new album is phenomenal.

 

I'd like to see where that Thrice record and that Jungle record charted.

 

New Thrice album ro me is OK. Has some great moments and some mediocore moments thst could have been phenomenal if executed a little different. Definitely some jams. I wish them all the success.

 

I know the main conversation in here is about Thrice, but worth noting that Carrie Underwood had the biggest sales week of any female artist in 2018, AND the biggest sales week for a country artist. This happened amidst a big controversy where country radio DJs are trying to argue that their listeners don't want to hear female artists, hence the male-dominated country charts. Pretty cool.

 

Yea I'm super happy for Carrie! Biggest sales week for a woman since Taylor Swift is certainly something to be proud of.

 

I thought the issue with women on country radio came more from Margo Price, Kacey Musgraves, and artists similar to them? Carrie has always been all over commercial country radio, Carrie is a much "safer" choice than other female country artists who tackle social issues.

 

THRICE charted at number 6.

 

Nah, it's pretty much everyone at this point. Country radio didn't play the last Miranda Lambert record at all, and Carrie's newest single was the worst performer of her career. Those are the two biggest female stars in country and they can't get played. We're at the point where there are maybe one or two female artists that score number one country singles every year, versus all the other weeks of year where male artists are at the top. The argument from the DJs/country radio establishment is literally "our listeners want to hear songs by men."

Carrie is definitely a "safer" choice than Margo (not really that much safer than Kacey at this point), but it's still huge that she outsold every male country artist that has released an album this year, not to mention major female pop artists like Ariana Grande and Cardi B. Most of her fans are still country listeners (hence the huge album sales number/smaller streaming number), so this is a definite rebuke to the "people don't want to hear songs by female artists" bullshit.

 

Def hear you on this, I actually think it goes back to the Dixie Chicks issue. Anytime you have strong women who begin to question the male conservative establishment of country music, the radio programmers will shy away. Most other genres could honestly do without radio play, but country seems to be the one genre where radio is still vital.

I guess I just thought Carrie was/is still huge on country radio?

Edit: Damn, I just looked at the Top 20 country radio songs...wowww...besides Maren Morris (11) and Carly Pearce (16) theres no other females on the chart. Also, all these white bro country singers look exactly alike!

 

It’s honestly a huge problem. I think the Dixie Chicks thing probably was the beginning of it. But yeah, women don’t get played, and then labels look at those numbers to decide when artists get to release albums. I knew about Carly Pearce for 2+ years before she finally scored a radio hit last year, at which point she went to number one. But it took that happening for the label to get off its ass and release her fucking album.

 

It's crazy because as a pretty casual country fan, the best country music I've heard in recent years has definitely come from women and like Chris Stapleton. Miranda Lambert's last album was great, Kacey is obviously great, I've always had a soft spot for Carrie. And I feel like growing up when I listened to the most country it was a more even split.

 

Bebe a non country singer had a number 1 country song this year surprised its not top 20 anymore

 

I wish Cassadee pope, Danielle Bradbury, raelynn, Kelsea ballerini, Maddie & Tae Kacey Musgraves, Lauren Alaina, and others would be on the radio. Also same with Kelly Clarkson if you saw her Tweet about iheart not playing her new stuff

 

In terms of mainstream or mainstream leaning artists, there’s really no contest. The women are way more creative, have better voices, and don’t lean so much on production. The gulf would probably be even wider if Nashville would greenlight more projects from young female artists. Records like the Caitlyn Smith album from this year sit on the shelf for years if the labels can’t get any radio traction for the artist. Not that male artists are immune to this treatment: it also happened to Chris Stapleton.

Kelsea is one of the few that can get played, though she has not had anywhere near the amount of success in that regard with her second album as she did with her first.

 

Is this a new version of that discussions or is this still the same one that started a few years ago?

 

There's been a lot of talk about it lately on Twitter, but it all kind of goes back to the "Tomatogate" thing, which I assume is what you were referring to. The guy who made those comments did resurface earlier this year, though, and he doubled down on his claim that country radio stations can only make ratings by choosing playlists that are predominantly male.

More artists are speaking out about this stuff now, though. Carrie even talked about it in an interview a few weeks ago.