Lee DeWyze's First Week Sales Numbers

Since I am a numbers person, I love to look at lists of numbers. Now that Lee DeWyze's debut album has been out for about a week, the preliminary sales numbers are in and they do not look very promising. The Hits Daily Double site currently has him at #24 with sales of 10,593 with 31.77% of the tally collected. If you divide that out 10,593/0.3177 = 33,342 which is not very encouraging. They estimate the final number will be more like 40,000 to 45,000 but that is still only about half what Kris Allen sold his first week almost exactly a year ago with 85,000 units, which was then the lowest total of any Idol winner. Consider that Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" has been out almost a full a month now and it is still selling 4x what "Live It Up" is selling, and even her "Holiday Collection" album is selling more than twice that of Lee's debut week sales. Lee is still heavily promoting his album and hopefully he can keep his sales numbers steady. With Crystal Bowersox's album officially releasing in just three weeks today, I am surprised she has not officially released her single and title track "Farmer's Daughter" more fervently to radio stations. It sounds like they filmed the video just the other day and hopefully that is ready to be premiered somewhere soon. She did perform live in Chicago this past weekend and she also has a four part interview being broadcast on the FOX TV station in Toledo this week. With Lee's sales numbers being so low, I can see Crystal may have problems selling too many albums either, but I am not sure how much she really cares.

Crystal's First Single "Hold On" or "Farmer's Daughter"?

Early this month it was announced that the first single off Crystal Bowersox's debut album, "Farmer's Daughter", was going to be the Kara DioGuardi and Chad Kroeger penned song "Hold On", but now that may not be so true. Tonight Crystal is premiering the title track, "Farmer's Daughter" on The Mix (WTMX) in Chicago and she had tweeted earlier that she had been working on the music video for that song. A tweet from today hints that "Farmer's Daughter" may indeed be the new single from the album. There is also a remixed version of the title track on her MySpace page, and it sounds gorgeous, although I wonder how "radio friendly" it is. I assume the version they play on the radio will remove the "F-word" from the beginning like the version she sang on VH1. The VH1 version is still my favorite version of the song, since I like the added percussion, but I still think the version on MySpace has a little too much background vocals and instrumentation for my liking. Plus she seems to be singing it with more passion on the video than on the studio version. Her MySpace page shows the song has had over 2,700 plays since it was posted so hopefully it will be popular once it hits the radio as well.

Lee's Album Released and "Sweet Serendipity" Ford ad, I mean Music Video

Yesterday, Lee DeWyze's debut album was officially released, but unfortunately not initially on iTunes! There appears to have been some technical difficulties earlier in the day which was not allowing people to download his album. Coincidentally his album was released the same day Apple announced they finally had the rights to sell all of the Beatles old music, so Apple was probably more concerned in getting all the Fab Four's music ready for download than the music of the latest winner of American Idol. Lee has also premiered the video for "Sweet Serendipity" on his own website (or YouTube, of course) and that looks like your typical VH1 "ah, isn't that sweet" kind of video. A cute girl and a cute guy (Lee, of course) get together at the end and walk off together. It definitely has its appeal, and should do well for him. I do love how the song says "I ain't got no car" but he appears to drive a very nice late model Ford Mustang in the video, and the girl has a red Mustang convertible. You could buy quite a few pairs of jeans with what you pay in insurance on those cars and they must be "doing just fine" to be able to afford them. Luckily her Mustang did have Microsoft Sync technology, so that makes it all worthwhile! Heaven forbid you have to touch a knob or button to listen to some music. I have decided to change the words to his song to make them more appropriate for the video:

I just got one car
A gas guzzling machine
I saw my State Farm bill
And now I'm weak at the knees

Season 9 Top 2 continues for Lee DeWyze and Crystal Bowersox

Yesterday American Idol Season 9 seemed to continue with the "Top 2" Lee DeWyze and Crystal Bowersox performing live in separate venues. Lee DeWyze performed on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Crystal is now available to see live on VH1.com. Lee performed his new single "Sweet Serendipity" with his new band, and they looked pretty good together. The guitar and bass player sang background on the choruses and were actually capable of spitting out all those words together. Overall the performance was not too bad, especially since it was supposedly their first time performing live together (they perform again tomorrow in a set in New York City). I thought the song sounded better live than on the recording and hopefully his performance will increase interest in his single and his upcoming album. Someone posted it on YouTube but that may be taken down by the powers at NBC, so it is just as easy to go to the official Tonight Show site and view the 11/9 show and go to the last commercial break. Crystal's songs include Farmer's Daughter, Jolene and Riding With the Radio performed with just her bass player, Frankie May and a drummer. That stripped down sound suits her well and those tracks sound a lot better than the original demos for her album. The VH1 site seems really slow streaming the videos, but luckily one fan made copies on YouTube which will hopefully not be taken down either.

The Real Album Cover for Crystal Bowersox's "Farmer's Daughter"

Aha, they have officially released what the album cover of "Farmer's Daughter" will look like and it is quite interesting. Nobody knows what happened to the apostrophe in "Farmer's" and whether it will be there or not. The cover art gives her album a very old fashioned, folksy look which actually does not match the over produced radio sound on the initial music clips that have been released. The producer, David Bendeth, did say those were not the final mixes, so the songs are still in the works. There is also a third song sample available to listen to called "Lonely Won't Come Around", which you can hear to decide what you think. Along with "Hold On" and "Farmer's Daughter" that makes three tracks you can hear in their not so final format. You can hear all three on MJ's Big Blog. Also on the blog is a post with a link to a YouTube page that gives short sample's to all the tracks on Lee DeWyze's "Live It Up" album.

Clips of Crystal's Songs, Lee's upcoming Performances

Well, just as Lee Dewyze's first single was too much overproduced pop for my liking, they have seemed to have done the same thing to Crystal Bowersox's songs too. Someone on her fan forums was able to record the music clips from HitPredictor.com to MP3 and post them on their forum (as well as on her main site's forum.) They took the title track from the album ,"Farmer's Daughter", and added two much production that seems to bury her voice with too many instruments. Crystal sings her first single, "Hold On", quite admirably, but it is also suffering from the same "too much" syndrome, too much backing vocals, too much instrumentation. I was hoping Jive would not do it as much to her as RCA did to Lee, but I was wrong. It seems like many of her fans agree (as do many of Lee's fans as well.) Good news for Lee, though, is that his track "Sweet Serendipity" is gaining in airplay and moving up the charts. He is currently #46 on the Hot AC chart and #44 on USA Today's "Idol Airplay Chart". He also has some media appearances scheduled in the upcoming week to promote his album "Live It Up" which will be released in just over a week. Starting with the Tonight Show tomorrow, he will be visiting the Today Show, Regis and Kelly, Ellen and then the VH1 Top 20 Countdown. He should be premiering his music video for his single soon as well.

Crystal's First Single "Hold On" - Not an Original

The first single from Crystal Bowersox's "Farmer's Daughter" album will be "Hold On" written by Chad Kroeger (of Nickelback) and Kara DioGuardi. It should be released a few weeks before the album comes out mid-December and I will be interested to hear what she does with it. The image here is her current twitter icon and some think it may be the album art for her cover. Lee's "Sweet Serendipity" is getting some airplay spins (117 its first week) and hopefully that will go up in the coming weeks before his release. He needs some media attention though. Where are his marketing people? It sounds like Crystal is doing a acoustic video shoot for VH1. Interestingly Crystal's "Up to the Mountain" is still on the top 100 Idol airplay list at number 98.

And now the real results begin...

The finale is long over and even the summer tour ended months ago. Now is where the real fun begins. Season 9 winner Lee DeWyze has released his first single "Sweet Serendipity" and his album "Live It Up" will be released in two weeks on November 16. This will start the true "results finale" where we see how well the contestants will do in the real music industry. I have listened to Lee's first released single and it is much more "pop" and radio friendly than I expected. It sounds like a good upbeat single for pop radio, but I have no idea if it will become a hit or not. That is really not up to even Lee that much any more, as it is to his label and how they market and push his music. I don't know if his whole album will sound this "pop" as compared to his two previous indie albums, but the different sound may help him and it may hurt him -- it could go either way. Since I am somebody who actually does not like most typical "pop" music anyway, I am definitely not a good judge of how well he might do. Personally, I preferred the more folksy, old fashioned sound that Crystal Bowersox favored, so I am also quite eagerly awaiting the December 14 release of her debut album titled "Farmer's Daughter" (after one of her previously released songs which will obviously be on the album.) If she comes out with such a pop friendly single like "Sweet Serendipity" I would truly be shocked. I am also curious what Casey James' album will sound like when it is released next year. He has been quite silent in the press since the tour ended (compared to Lee and Crystal), but being signed with BNA Records in Nashville, I am guessing he is going to be aiming more country. Being a tall blond Texan who can sing and play a guitar with ease and who has the looks to attract many female fans, I could see him being a big instant country success story, and may be the top seller out of the top three from Season 9. Plus, I find it interesting that his artist name on the BNA site is not simply "Casey James", but "The Casey James Band".  I wonder why he wants it named more like a band than a soloist? Another Season 9 who could easily be a big country music star in a few years is Aaron Kelly. I think he may have been too young to realistically win in 2010, but he has the potential to be big in a few years. Stick a cowboy hat on that boy and have him start working out with weights. He can be another country heartthrob in no time.  Siobhan Magnus is also a big wild card. Under the right guidance she might become huge as well, but I am not sure if sticking with her current band, Lunar Valve, is the best direction for her. It should be interesting to see how all these contestants succeed in their musical careers.