my wife and my work-wife/bff are both obsessed. I had a 6-hour flight on Saturday and my wife listened to the album on repeat the ENTIRE time. Then came home and listened all yesterday and fell asleep to it playing. I don't have the "repeat over and over" gene in me, so it's all pretty crazy to me
I have a minor version of the gene, which means I've "only" played it 2 or 3 times a day since it came out.
Not to mention the erasure of Lafcadio in his review by calling s/t their debut, haha. I know it’s not the point and that the review isn’t about them but damn Craig like 15 seconds of research couldn’t hurt
@phaynes12 and @Drew Beringer let me know if I am reading this right, but the link says they are projecting 230-255k in total activity for the first week sales number. J Cole's first week number was 282k, so if HDD is projecting right then SOUR won't be the biggest selling album of the year, or even the month? Lemme know if I am reading this wrong.
@Craig Manning and @ItsAndrew have been part of this discussion as well, along with others who I can't recall
Oh of course it will, but you don't think that if J Cole can outsell her first week numbers that maybe this won't be the biggest album of the year, that there are plenty of big names that can and will outsell it?
absolutely. the cole album at the end of the year will be a fraction of this, regardless of first week we’ve seen time and time again pop albums that grow consistently over time. billie’s album sold 313k week one and went on to sell 1.3m by the end of the year and 3m in its lifetime
Interested to see the physical sales comps. J Cole may have taken it just by not releasing singles... putting "good 4 u" got the hype out there but those 80M+ streams didn't count in the right week.
Ahhh thank you! I don't really look at the Spotify charts so I didn't know to look at the difference haha. Is there anything big dropping this week? She could potentially go from #2 to #1 on the albums chart.
So, my feeling at this point is that it will need some impressive long-tail legs to take the year-end crown. My worry is that she won't have enough of a first-week boost to catch Wallen, who debuted with similar numbers and has had incredible legs in spite of...everything around him. Those numbers don't look like "biggest album of the year" numbers to me. Some other recent-ish victors of that title, and their first-week sales: Folklore: 846,000 Lover: 867,000 Reputation: 1.2 million 25: 3.38 million 1989: 1.287 million 20/20 Experience: 968,000 21: 352,000 Ironically, it's best bet at becoming a year-topping behemoth is to follow 21's arc, which debuted respectably and then absolutely exploded in terms of word of mouth and buzz. The other outlier is The Greatest Showman, which debuted at 71 (couldn't find the numbers) and then picked up a ton of steam. But that's not really comparable in any meaningful way, since that was driven by a movie that had genuinely historic legs at the box office and that had a whole-year runway to gain and build a sales advantage, since it came out in December and then won the following year in album sales. So again, it's a wait-and-see situation. I don't know if 21-style staying power is possible anymore, and I have absolutely no doubt that Adele could top Olivia's first-week numbers by three or four times over. But it depends on who releases albums, and what kind of legs a pop album can even have on streaming in 2021.
Really good breakdown, I think you've nailed it on all ends here. I also kinda wonder, what will the next single be and will it keep up the momentum? The 3 released feel like the obvious ones to me, maybe "traitor" can keep the train rolling. And of course, being in 2021, there's a high chance this isn't her only release of the year. High chance of one-off singles, maybe an EP, but what is most likely is a deluxe edition in a couple months, which always helps boost streams a bit