There will be no sophomore slump for Thompson Square, whose album “Just Feels Good” debuts at No. 4 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and No. 13 on the Billboard 200. Lead single “If I Didn’t Have You” is No. 7 on Hot Country Songs.
The duo’s Keifer and Shawna Thompson penned six of the album’s 13 cuts. “The songs came out really easy for this project,” Keifer says. “The first album showed everybody what we sounded like. On this album, we feel it’s going to show people who we are and how we got together.”
The pair spent nine years bartending and playing for tips at the Wheel on Nashville’s famed Lower Broadway before signing a deal with Stoney Creek Records. Their career exploded with “Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not,” which topped Hot Country Songs (and hit No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100) and has sold 2 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The act won vocal duo honors in 2012 from the Country Music Assn. and the Academy of Country Music and was Billboard’s No. 1 new country artist of 2011. Thompson Square’s self-titled debut album has sold 366,000 copies, and reached No. 3 on Top Country Albums and No. 15 on the Billboard 200.
Consumers who purchase “Just Feels Good” at Walmart will get three bonus tracks, including “What Am I Gonna Do,” written in the wake of Shawna’s father’s death in 2012. “Over the years I’ve saved a cassette of me and Dad singing,” she says. “I was about 4 years old and we were singing this gospel hymn, ‘Coming Home.’ We spliced it on the end of ‘What Am I Gonna Do.'”
To promote the new album, Thompson Square made visits to “Fox & Friends” and Yahoo Music’s “RAM Country” and took over Verizon Music’s Twitter account to chat with fans. The pair was featured as a CBS Radio “Launch” artist and partnered with Spotify to create a “Just Feels Good” playlist. Another sales driver for the new album is the duo’s slot on Luke Bryan’s tour, which runs through October. “They took almost every dime they are making from that Luke tour and plowed it right back into production on the show,” BBR Music Group senior VP Jon Loba says. “You can see that when you go to a Thompson Square show. It is an experience.”