How Did Eminems Recovery Have Such A Big Debut?
At this point, we’re used to Eminem debuting at #1. After all, he’s done it six times in a row, including two records that sold more than 1 million copies in their first week on the charts. But following last year’s comeback album, Relapse, which sold nearly 2 million copies despite Em admitting that it was not his finest hour, it wasn’t a lock that Recovery would be greeted with the same instant success as the Detroit rapper’s previous work. There were the fans who were turned off by the weird accents he adopted on Relapse, the dark, gory vibe of the campaign promoting that album and the overall grim nature of the music, not to mention the lack of a breakout, signature hit. And while Relapse did very solid business its first week out, with sales topping 608,000, even some experts were surprised when Recovery snagged the year’s highest debut to date, with sales of 741,000 after initial projections had it in the 500,000-600,000 range. In a music industry starved for hits, Recovery becam
