Stumbled across this while looking for something else entirely today. Sure, it's a week old, but the Billboard piece, published just a day after the Denton-sprung Eli Young Band's Life At Best earned its release last Tuesday, is fairly telling. In short: The early returns on the album's sales were so strong that the folks behind the trade magazine were willing to guesstimate that the album would sell somewhere around 30,000 copies, possibly landing the disc in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart, and likely making it the highest-selling debut of the week.
As of writing this item, the folks over at Billboard had yet to update their online postings of the latest chart positions. But locally based Universal Records rep Penny Lazo tells us this much: The album did even better than Billboard initially predicted.
According to Lazo, Life at Best officially sold 35,013 copies in its first sales week -- more than five grand over Billboard's estimate, and more than double the first-week sales of the band's 2008 major label debut, Jet, Black & Jealous, which saw the band pushing 16,000 discs.
Meaning? Well, when the new charts comes out, Life at Best will be listed as the No. 6 album in overall sales in the nation for the week, and it will come in at No. 3 on the country album sales charts.
Credit ubiquitous lead single "Crazy Girl" (peep the video below) and a heavy touring schedule -- including a sold-out show last week at Billy Bob's in Fort Worth before a crowd of 6,000 -- for the uptick.
Impressive stuff, for sure.
