diditagain

If was assume X Factor used the pre-Back Home, 40 million number as a starting point, then it is entirely possible Westlife sold 2.5 million albums in the past two years. If Back Home sold 1.2 million worldwide, then their other eight studio albums needed to sell a total of 1.3 million copies worldwide in two years. That means that from Fall 2007 to now, each of the eight older studio albums needed to sell about 160,000 copies worldwide, which is entirely possible (I bought Unbreakable six months ago because I didn't own it and it was only 4 pounds on Amazon UK). According to Wikipedia, Westlife have won only 2 Brit Awards, but they have received 4 nominations. If X Factor claimed "4 Brit Awards" on purpose to try and fool the public, then they're morons, because that statistic is incredibly easy to verify. However, notice that the number used in the intro last night (4) was the number of nominations. It's entirely possible that the person gathering the statistics for the intro accidentally used the # of nominations instead of the # of wins, and no one assembling the intro noticed that statistic was incorrect. I'm sure Louis Walsh knows how many Brit Awards Westlife has won, but I'd be willing to bet he's not part of the team editing X Factor intros. If I thought that there was no reasonable explanation for any of the statements made last night, I'd gladly say so. But based on all the information found online and quoted in this topic, I can present legitimate explanations for two of the statements.

The "best selling band of the decade" didn't explicitly say "only albums," so Westlife could very well take first place when album sales and singles sales (and possibly DVD sales) are totaled. Regarding the "43 million" statistic, I don't believe that Simon Cowell/X Factor would lie and simply make up a statistic like that, since it's not like they need to artificially inflate Westlife's accomplishments. Also, remember that "43 million" could be the rounded figure -- mathematically speaking, anything over 42.5 rounded to the nearest whole number is 43! So, if the "40 million" previous figure was from before Back Home, they would have needed to sell only about 2.5 million albums worldwide in the past two years (including Back Home, which was released in Autumn 2007, and continuing sales of their back catalogue).

I finally heard "The Girl From Tiger Bay" in full last night, and it has a perfect autumnal feel to it (reminding me of Kylie Minogue's "Some Kind Of Bliss" -- for obvious reasons!). Every time I listen to it, the song makes me smile, yet the reminiscing tone almost brings a tear to my eye. One of the classiest songs in recent memory.

Westlife just finished, and it was great (I'm sure a clip will appear on Youtube shortly!). I know they get sh*t for performing covers, but when they sing them well, I have no complaints. And how nice that Westlife live sounds just as good as Westlife on CD (compare their performance tonight to Whitney and even Cheryl Cole last week).

As of 4:52pm London time, What About Now has risen to #22! With an audience of 12-14 million watching, the X Factor performance will surely result in a huge jump.

After listening to the 30 second clip, I can't wait to download this next week -- so glad I opened an iTunes UK account using an iTunes UK gift card!. I have never liked Chris Daughtry's voice, but like the voices of the guys from Westlife, so I like this cover version. I do wonder if this was one of the "few covers" mentioned that would be on the album, but it wasn't necessarily planned as the first single. From a marketing standpoint, it probably would have been silly not to capitalize on the exposure of the original on X Factor (since Westlife's version was already finished for the album). Also, notice that the single is being released a full month before the album as opposed to the usual "two weeks before the album" strategy, presumably to build on the "X Factor momentum" of the original.

I wonder if the change to Nov. 24 had anything to do with the US? Nov. 24 is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Any CDs released that Tuesday would have zero sales from physical stores on the holiday (although online sales still occur). However, "Black Friday" is one of the busiest shopping days of the year here in the US, with ridiculous sale prices and many stores now opening at 3-4am with bargains. Any album released on Nov. 24 will be featured in the "New Releases" shelf in places like Best Buy, Target, Walmart, etc., which means maximum exposure on Black Friday. Also, stores usually offer lower CD prices as a Black Friday incentive (the Enya CD might be on sale for $9.99 since it is release-week, but on Black Friday they may drop the price to $7.99 for added value!). I can safely say that the reasons I explained above are why Simon Cowell chose Nov. 24 as the release date for Susan Boyle's album (large sales are pretty much a given in the US, but now anyone who liked Susan Boyle but hadn't heard about the album will see it prominently displayed if they go shopping on Black Friday). So, this could help Enya too!