Though exposure from “The Voice” and buzz for lead single “Honey Bee” undoubtedly helped drive sales for Blake Shelton’s “Red River Blue,” the Headline Planet sales report questioned whether 116,000 first-week sales was truly an impressive tally given the circumstance.
Much of the media hailed Shelton as the hottest thing in country music, at least on the male side, but early reports on sales for Eric Church’s “Chief” again question how strong Shelton’s sales total truly was.
Extending its one day sales data, Hits Daily Double projects Church’s latest album will sell between 130 and 140 thousand copies in its first week. Church certainly has fans and the album’s lead single “Homeboy” has garnered word-of-mouth and strong sales, but he has never had “Voice” level exposure. Further, though his music has a following, none of his previous singles has moved higher than number ten on the Billboard Country charts.
Neither of his previous albums landed higher than number four.
With that total, “Chief” should have no trouble topping the Billboard 200 album sales chart.
Also debuting this week is Kelly Rowland’s “Here I Am,” which looks good for 70-75,000 sales. That marks a slight dip from the launch figure for 2007’s “Ms. Kelly.”
Joss Stone’s “LP1” is looking at 25-28,000.