Thursday, December 03, 2009

Good News

In a rare show of taste, it looks like Susan Boyle's record has blown up; people inexplicably choosing a ridiculously amazing singer who looks like Peter from Family Guy instead of the usual whichever-19-year-old-girl-is-waving-her-ass-in-the-air-for-us-to-sniff-while-pretending-to-sing-an-incredibly-shitty-song-how-you-liking-these-hyphens? "artist."
The 'Britain's Got Talent' star sold an astounding 701,000 copies of her debut album, 'I Dreamed a Dream,' in the U.S., giving her the best first week sales of 2009 and the best-selling debut album by any woman since SoundScan began tracking in 1991.

It's also the biggest debut album by any artist since Snoop Dogg's 'Doggystyle' in 1993.

Her record label, Columbia, said Wednesday that 'Dream' has moved a whopping 3 million copies around the world in its opening week.

Also amazing is the way people purchased the album. Although digital sales have grown for years -- with iTunes being the main beneficiary -- consumers headed back to the record store for Boyle's debut.

Of course, "headed back to the record store" is code for "old people," but still. Good for her! And us, as I wondered before.

1 comment:

Kiko Jones said...

What I failed to take into account is that, contrary to Christopher Cross' situation, people already knew what Susan Boyle looked like before they bought her records. This might be a one-off thing where people might have chosen her to genuinely make a statement about the increasing plasticity of mainstream pop music.

But yeah, old farts (Gen-X and older) are the ones plunking down their cash for music these days. If I had the means I'd open a record store for fans of jazz, classical, world, and everything the digital pirates are NOT into. There's (some) gold in them thar hills.