Tuesday, August 21, 2007

"So Small" so HUGE on Charts

Carrie Underwood's unprecedented ascent to the upper echelons of Country music has been very impressive. With a debut album that will more than likely go 7x Platinum before the year is over and with four consecutive number one Country hits, Carrie has raised the bar very high for her second album. Given past music history, the odds of Carrie duplicating her past success are against her, but as most of you know she always seems to do the unexpected. Such is the case with her brand new single, "So Small." In only 22 days of airplay, Carrie's latest single has ascended to the top 10 of the Mediabase Country charts. Yes, that's pretty incredible to see, but it also demonstrates just how popular Carrie has become. As one of the "chart gurus" on her official website, CarrieUnderwood.fm, I consider it an honor and privilege to be up at 4 a.m. PT most mornings to post the new Mediabase charts hot off the presses! Of course with that little sacrifice, it also means I go to bed by 10 p.m. PT most nights... There's really not too much of a night life out here in Thousand Oaks, California (or the nearby surrounding area) so I'm really not missing out on much by effectively living on East coast time. ALL of the fun things out here require some traveling on the freeways. Oh joy! Asides, there's no one at the gym at 6:30 or 7 in the morning, so I can watch whatever TV show (Fox News or ESPN) and listen to whatever music (Country) that I want when I go in there at that hour unlike when you go in at a similar time at night!

Just to further the above point on Carrie's success and her growth in popularity, "Jesus, Take The Wheel" (Carrie's first Country single) had a very impressive and record-breaking #39 debut two years ago on the Mediabase Country charts. Her first Country hit would go on to have a five week run at the top there, and a six week run on Billboard's Country chart, and it even made it to #6 on the Christian AC charts. Two Sundays ago, "So Small" debuted on the Mediabase Country charts at #25 - a full 14 spots higher than "Jesus, Take The Wheel" did! The only questions with "So Small" are not if it will get to #1, but when? And then once it's there, just how many weeks will it spend at the top??? With her sophomore album (still unnamed) to be released on October 23rd, there's just no telling what kind of records Carrie is going to set when it comes out. It's a given that the new album will ship Platinum, even perhaps DOUBLE Platinum... How many units will it move in it's first week? A conservative guess would be about 500,000... more realistically, I expect it will move upwards of 750,000 units... All I know is that the next couple of months are definitely going to be a lot of fun if you're as much of a fan of Carrie's music as I am!

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

John - I give up - how do you make a hot link in a Blog on Carrieunderwood.fm?

Chuck

cs@carrieunderwood.fm
or
chas_smith@yahoo.com

John C said...

Chuck:

I just sent you an eMail. I'd detail it here, but the HTML codes get confused for some reason when I post it here.