Miley Cyrus is having a debut week, her biggest in a decade, with her new album, “Endless Summer Vacation.” Her single, “Flowers,” is the hit of the month.
But even with all this attention, Sony Music will come in at number three tomorrow with “Vacation.” No matter what they do they can’t compete with Universal Music Group.
Universal is huge right now with the new album from sort-of racist apologizer country singer Morgan Wallen. His new album, called One Thing at a Time, scored 500,000 copies last week and is looking at another 250,000 this week. The album has 36 tracks, most of which take up the entire streaming singles chart. People — some people, not me — are playing these songs over and over despite Wallen being heard using the “N word” on a home video last year. His fans don’t care!
UMG is also hot with an Asian Pop girl band with nine members called Twice. No, we only called them once, but they think it’s Twice. They will come in second for the week.
Miley is third in the race, with a projected 112,000 copies including streaming. “Endless Summer Vacation” is a pretty good pop album with some excellent tracks and a couple that sound re-assembled from old songs. But overall I’d give it an A- because it puts this excellent singer back on top of the game. Also, despite being shunted into teams of songwriter/producers who shouldn’t be there, Michael Pollack, and his “Flowers” partner Gregory Aldae Hein, have a few tracks. It’s too bad they were made to share their byline, but that’s the ignominious state of the music industry these days.
Let’s see what Sony can do with follow up singles after “Flowers.” They have a lot of opportunities with “Jaded,” the Brandi Carlile duet “Thousand Miles,” “Island,” and “Wonder Woman.” All of these are ready made for radio.
