HITS: Tomorrow X Together 160K; Sam Smith 36K

[iHype.]

hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=334478&title=NEW-RELEASES:-TXT-FILE-A-BIGGIE

Tomorrow X Together (BIGHIT/Imperial/Republic) 130-160k
Sam Smith (Capitol) 27-32k
Lil Yachty (Quality Control/Motown) 19-24k

[areyoureadytojump]

Poor Sza.

Sam Smith's last album did 40k.

[rnb]

eh sza will be back next week so, also ouch no ava mention, her album really flopped huh

[WolfSpear]

TXT is aiming to the 5th K-Pop group to top the Billboard 200, following BTS, SuperM, Stray Kids & BLACKPINK.

BILLBOARD 200 #1's (K-Pop):

Love Yourself: Tear - BTS (1) [June 2, 2018]
Love Yourself: Answer - BTS (1) [September 8, 2018]
Map Of The Soul: Persona - BTS (1) [April 27, 2018]
SuperM (EP) - SuperM (1) [October 19, 2019]
Map Of The Soul: 7 - BTS (1) [March 7, 2020]
BE - BTS (1) [December 5, 2020]
Oddinary (EP) - Stray Kids (1) [April 2, 2022]
Proof - BTS (1) [June 25, 2022]
Born Pink - BLACKPINK (1) [October 1, 2022]
Maxident (EP) - Stray Kids (1) [October 22, 2022]

MOST #1's with 6.

[Choco]

Ouch at Sam Smith. Expected but ouch.

[kcdawg13]

Sam Smith couldn't pass 50k even with a huge hit single, ouch.

I think Yatchy might increase during the week, his album is getting incredibly good reception from audiences and word of mouth is really good.

[Troublemaker]

Ouch at Sam! It’s becoming harder to gauge who will sell well other than the usual suspects.

[rnb]

idk i expected this for sam so it doesn’t really mean anything to me

[NeRD]

Horrible numbers for Sam. Are they doing well in the UK at least?

[iHype.]

I would say even despite not expecting Sam to perform hugely, this is *still* well below expectations and surprising.

I thought they could've been able to do 50K or 75K in the worst scenario. Less than the prior album is just beyond bad, and the fact without Unholy's streaming the album would barely be treading above 10K....

[KeepDeanWeird]

Unholy steaming + radio monster only translates to 30k? Take away this week’s Unholy’s streams to that total and … wow.

[musiclife]

That's ALL Sam is doing??? Lol

Poor Ava Max :( her album is a gem.

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Idk why some expected Sam to do better. Sam's last album wasn't a hit either and Unholy is their only song to chart in the Top 40 and be on there for more than 10 weeks, it was clearly a fluke. It just reminds me of About Damn Time not helping Lizzo's album.

Congrats to TXT btw.

[iHype.]

Jan 29, 2023 2:10:01 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Idk why some expected Sam to do better. Sam's last album wasn't a hit either and Unholy is their only song to chart in the Top 40 and be on there for more than 10 weeks, it was clearly a fluke. It just reminds me of About Damn Time not helping Lizzo's album.

Congrats to TXT btw.

Considering they were an album artist at one point, selling similarly to Ed Sheeran/Justin Bieber/other A-listers it is always going to be surprising to some seeing someone go from that status to doing 30k *with* a #1 hit.

Lizzo was never a big albums artist and still establishing her name to an extent.

Sam drifted apart from their original demographic image wise and music wise obviously. However it’s unfortunate that they didn’t seem to pickup any traction with the new demographic the music/image appeals to in order to cover the loss of the original demographic.

The expectations were low to begin with (most people thought 50K or 75K was possible) and this still managed to do even substantially worse than that.

[Future Captain]

Nice numbers for TXT and yeah, Sam was never going to get big numbers with this album considering Unholy just isn't the type of hit that generates any particular interest in the album project its from

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Jan 29, 2023 4:18:33 GMT -5 iHype. said:

Jan 29, 2023 2:10:01 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Idk why some expected Sam to do better. Sam's last album wasn't a hit either and Unholy is their only song to chart in the Top 40 and be on there for more than 10 weeks, it was clearly a fluke. It just reminds me of About Damn Time not helping Lizzo's album.

Congrats to TXT btw.

Considering they were an album artist at one point, selling similarly to Ed Sheeran/Justin Bieber/other A-listers it is always going to be surprising to some seeing someone go from that status to doing 30k *with* a #1 hit.

Lizzo was never a big albums artist and still establishing her name to an extent.

Sam drifted apart from their original demographic image wise and music wise obviously. However it’s unfortunate that they didn’t seem to pickup any traction with the new demographic the music/image appeals to in order to cover the loss of the original demographic.

The expectations were low to begin with (most people thought 50K or 75K was possible) and this still managed to do even substantially worse than that.

Sam had AN album be a smash hit but Sam was never on the level of Ed, Bieber, etc. Even the Thrill of It All was a moderate success but it wasn't this massive inescapable album unless, at least not in America.

Sam has been a singles artist for more than 5 years at this point and even then, most of the success of those singles happens outside of the US. Honestly with Unholy, I would've been more surprised debuted in the Top 5.

[iHype.]

Jan 29, 2023 6:39:29 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Jan 29, 2023 4:18:33 GMT -5 iHype. said:

Considering they were an album artist at one point, selling similarly to Ed Sheeran/Justin Bieber/other A-listers it is always going to be surprising to some seeing someone go from that status to doing 30k *with* a #1 hit.

Lizzo was never a big albums artist and still establishing her name to an extent.

Sam drifted apart from their original demographic image wise and music wise obviously. However it’s unfortunate that they didn’t seem to pickup any traction with the new demographic the music/image appeals to in order to cover the loss of the original demographic.

The expectations were low to begin with (most people thought 50K or 75K was possible) and this still managed to do even substantially worse than that.

Sam had AN album be a smash hit but Sam was never on the level of Ed, Bieber, etc. Even the Thrill of It All was a moderate success but it wasn't this massive inescapable album unless, at least not in America.

Sam has been a singles artist for more than 5 years at this point and even then, most of the success of those singles happens outside of the US. Honestly with Unholy, I would've been more surprised debuted in the Top 5.

You’re changing the goal post considering I didn’t say The Thrill was a “massive inescapable album” (??). I simply said Sam performed similarly to A-list album artists.

And yes, The Thrill Of It All did comparable to many A-list artists, It opened with nearly 250K and went multi platinum. That would be considered a nice success for nearly all A-list names who basically aren’t Adele or Taylor Swift.

Obviously Sam has declined hard since then but someone who had multiple notable albums the past decade struggling to do 30K with a #1 hit (and not being able to reverse any further decline whatsoever) is kind of unprecedented so yeah… it’s obvious why some people would be surprised.

Generally absolutely nobody was expecting 200K first week again… but not even 50K, and by a notably less margin (hello, 27K is nearly 2x lower). There’s expecting low numbers and then there’s just bombing. I’m not expecting Katy Perry to ever return to her glory days, but if she got a lead single to go #1 on Hot 100 again only to open with 27K and even worse than Smile then yeah I’m absolutely surprised.

[rnb]

ihype don’t argue with random people challenge

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Jan 29, 2023 8:40:05 GMT -5 iHype. said:

Jan 29, 2023 6:39:29 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Sam had AN album be a smash hit but Sam was never on the level of Ed, Bieber, etc. Even the Thrill of It All was a moderate success but it wasn't this massive inescapable album unless, at least not in America.

Sam has been a singles artist for more than 5 years at this point and even then, most of the success of those singles happens outside of the US. Honestly with Unholy, I would've been more surprised debuted in the Top 5.

You’re changing the goal post considering I didn’t say The Thrill was a “massive inescapable album” (??). I simply said Sam performed similarly to A-list album artists.

And yes, The Thrill Of It All did comparable to many A-list artists, It opened with nearly 250K and went multi platinum. That would be considered a nice success for nearly all A-list names who basically aren’t Adele or Taylor Swift.

Obviously Sam has declined hard since then but someone who had multiple notable albums the past decade struggling to do 30K with a #1 hit (and not being able to reverse any further decline whatsoever) is kind of unprecedented so yeah… it’s obvious why some people would be surprised.

Generally absolutely nobody was expecting 200K first week again… but not even 50K, and by a notably less margin (hello, 27K is nearly 2x lower). There’s expecting low numbers and then there’s just bombing. I’m not expecting Katy Perry to ever return to her glory days, but if she got a lead single to go #1 on Hot 100 again only to open with 27K and even worse than Smile then yeah I’m absolutely surprised.

But y'all are acting like this is his first album since 2017 when it's their second. Their last album debuted with 41,000 units sold, 18K pure. Them underperforming shouldn't have been a surprise going off of that. 

No offense but just going by the new releases, TXT was the only one I expected to do big numbers and the only one y'all should've expected. We're no longer in an era where having a hit - even a global #1 - moves album sales/units,

[Envoirment]

I was expecting Sam to do ~50k, although apart from "Unholy", the album isn't that great. The success of "Unholy" should at least keep the album afloat for a while. I hope "I'm Not Here To Make Friends" can become a hit and help the album out too.

[Enigma.]

At least their album tracks are doing 2x what Ava Max is doing on Spotify. But yeah, take away Unholy and they wouldn't reach 20k even.

[85la]

Jan 29, 2023 9:11:10 GMT -5 Codex said:

I think Sam flopping with this is parallel to Katy cutting her hair except he just got fat and gay with bad fashion sense. Everyone loves Unholy but Sam themselves are getting constantly ridiculed for their image...

Ok lol

[85la]

Jan 29, 2023 10:06:17 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Jan 29, 2023 8:40:05 GMT -5 iHype. said:

You’re changing the goal post considering I didn’t say The Thrill was a “massive inescapable album” (??). I simply said Sam performed similarly to A-list album artists.

And yes, The Thrill Of It All did comparable to many A-list artists, It opened with nearly 250K and went multi platinum. That would be considered a nice success for nearly all A-list names who basically aren’t Adele or Taylor Swift.

Obviously Sam has declined hard since then but someone who had multiple notable albums the past decade struggling to do 30K with a #1 hit (and not being able to reverse any further decline whatsoever) is kind of unprecedented so yeah… it’s obvious why some people would be surprised.

Generally absolutely nobody was expecting 200K first week again… but not even 50K, and by a notably less margin (hello, 27K is nearly 2x lower). There’s expecting low numbers and then there’s just bombing. I’m not expecting Katy Perry to ever return to her glory days, but if she got a lead single to go #1 on Hot 100 again only to open with 27K and even worse than Smile then yeah I’m absolutely surprised.

But y'all are acting like this is his first album since 2017 when it's their second. Their last album debuted with 41,000 units sold, 18K pure. Them underperforming shouldn't have been a surprise going off of that. 

No offense but just going by the new releases, TXT was the only one I expected to do big numbers and the only one y'all should've expected. We're no longer in an era where having a hit - even a global #1 - moves album sales/units,

But the thing is unlike that album, this one's lead single was actually a smash #1 hit, so yes it is a little suprising that it's opening even worse than that. Oh well, at least Unholy's previous success will contribute to its SPS total and RIAA certifications.

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Jan 29, 2023 13:30:16 GMT -5 85la said:

Jan 29, 2023 10:06:17 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

But y'all are acting like this is his first album since 2017 when it's their second. Their last album debuted with 41,000 units sold, 18K pure. Them underperforming shouldn't have been a surprise going off of that. 

No offense but just going by the new releases, TXT was the only one I expected to do big numbers and the only one y'all should've expected. We're no longer in an era where having a hit - even a global #1 - moves album sales/units,

But the thing is unlike that album, this one's lead single was actually a smash #1 hit, so yes it is a little suprising that it's opening even worse than that. Oh well, at least Unholy's previous success will contribute to its SPS total and RIAA certifications.

Already addressed this when I said having a smash number one hit didn't help Lizzo so why would it help Sam.

And also to correct you: Unholy wasnt the lead single, it was Love Me More. That wasn't just a promo song either, it was sent to radio. Also the follow up to Unholy, Gimme, didn't chart/isn't expected to chart. 

Unholy was clearly an outlier for Sam Smith. It's probably time we temper expectations for an album to do well just because of one hit. Album success jn a post-streaming environment isn't so direct. 

[85la]

Jan 29, 2023 13:51:22 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Jan 29, 2023 13:30:16 GMT -5 85la said:

But the thing is unlike that album, this one's lead single was actually a smash #1 hit, so yes it is a little suprising that it's opening even worse than that. Oh well, at least Unholy's previous success will contribute to its SPS total and RIAA certifications.

Already addressed this when I said having a smash number one hit didn't help Lizzo so why would it help Sam.

And also to correct you: Unholy wasnt the lead single, it was Love Me More. That wasn't just a promo song either, it was sent to radio. Also the follow up to Unholy, Gimme, didn't chart/isn't expected to chart. 

Unholy was clearly an outlier for Sam Smith. It's probably time we temper expectations for an album to do well just because of one hit. Album success jn a post-streaming environment isn't so direct. 

I mean the correlation between album success and singles success has never been completely direct, but because this particular artist has a history of one massively performing album and one moderately-big performing one (unlike Lizzo), and yes his last album was a flop, but now that he has a major hit tacked onto this album (ok regardless of whether it was the first single), it's not at all unreasonable to expect it to have performed a little better. I don't think anyone was expecting a 200k+ #1 debut, I think all we're saying is we didn't expect it to do this particularly poorly, possibly as low as 25k where it might even miss the top 10. Are you completely not surprised, are the predictions exactly spot-on with your expectations?

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

I’d be curious to know why Sam’s album didn’t get more streams. What caused people who liked Unholy not to bother with the rest?

For me, I like “Unholy” but Sam’s voice and tone are grating to me. Yet, for some reason, I can’t picture “Unholy” being sung by anyone other than Sam and Kim. Sam’s nails-on-chalkboard tone somehow works in favour of the song for me and it’s really confusing.

[iHype.]

Jan 29, 2023 10:06:17 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Jan 29, 2023 8:40:05 GMT -5 iHype. said:

You’re changing the goal post considering I didn’t say The Thrill was a “massive inescapable album” (??). I simply said Sam performed similarly to A-list album artists.

And yes, The Thrill Of It All did comparable to many A-list artists, It opened with nearly 250K and went multi platinum. That would be considered a nice success for nearly all A-list names who basically aren’t Adele or Taylor Swift.

Obviously Sam has declined hard since then but someone who had multiple notable albums the past decade struggling to do 30K with a #1 hit (and not being able to reverse any further decline whatsoever) is kind of unprecedented so yeah… it’s obvious why some people would be surprised.

Generally absolutely nobody was expecting 200K first week again… but not even 50K, and by a notably less margin (hello, 27K is nearly 2x lower). There’s expecting low numbers and then there’s just bombing. I’m not expecting Katy Perry to ever return to her glory days, but if she got a lead single to go #1 on Hot 100 again only to open with 27K and even worse than Smile then yeah I’m absolutely surprised.

But y'all are acting like this is his first album since 2017 when it's their second. Their last album debuted with 41,000 units sold, 18K pure. Them underperforming shouldn't have been a surprise going off of that. 

No offense but just going by the new releases, TXT was the only one I expected to do big numbers and the only one y'all should've expected. We're no longer in an era where having a hit - even a global #1 - moves album sales/units,

Yes... their last album did bad, expectedly, seeing as it was dropped after being delayed for years and having 0 hits at the time of the album release.

No record label follows an album that had no hits going into release with an album that has a song sitting top 5 at release and expects *lower* numbers for following album.

[iHype.]

Jan 29, 2023 17:22:38 GMT -5 Devil Marlena Nylund said:

I’d be curious to know why Sam’s album didn’t get more streams. What caused people who liked Unholy not to bother with the rest?

For me, I like “Unholy” but Sam’s voice and tone are grating to me. Yet, for some reason, I can’t picture “Unholy” being sung by anyone other than Sam and Kim. Sam’s nails-on-chalkboard tone somehow works in favour of the song for me and it’s really confusing.

Well obviously the main reason I think of the continued decline was the image & sound is an entire 180 from the AC days where Sam was marketed as an Adele Jr.

However, you would think that while losing many of those fans/demo they would at least gain lots of new fans/demo to make up for that to some extent. Many fans of Charli XCX, Lil Nas X, etc type artists who like the LGBT-Pop and didn't necessarily pay attention to Sam when they did make their earlier music.

It may seem harsh but I know a criticism of Sam is that they just come off... boring. Which is pretty common and actually works for an AC artist lol, but once you start to go outside that image and try to seem 'edgy', 'different', 'boundary pushing', etc it just didn't resonate as authentic with people perhaps because they see Sam as boring and not able to truly pull it off.

It's sort of like how nobody would ever be able to take Celine Dion, Michael Buble, or Susan Boyle trying to do a new, edgy image/sound revamp seriously. 

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

I also don’t see Sam’s adoption of their current image/style as being particularly authentic. Like, the big extravagant outfits and everything come off as so forced to me and I wonder whether others might feel the same and if that’s preventing people from taking interest.

[Choco]

Most of the people I've seen on Twitter also took the more flamboyant image as a joke/make fun of it. I do think a lot of it is homophobia and fat shaming but maybe it doesn't come off as authentic to some people.

Unholy feels very much like a novelty hit in a way that reminds me of I Kissed a Girl. Katy eventually built a successful era with the second single and Sam hasn't done that so far.