Rock band Red is aiming to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with its new album, “Until We Have Faces.” The group could sell 45,000 copies by week’s end on Feb. 6, according to industry prognosticators. Red’s last album, “Innocence & Instinct” (2009), bowed at No. 15 with 39,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It also started at No. 1 on Top Christian Albums.
Indie duo the Civil Wars (Joy Williams and John Paul White) are also on track to make a high entrance, as their debut full-length, “Barton Hollow,” should bow in the top 10. Recent headline-maker Ricky Martin is also heading for the top 10 with “Musica + Alma + Sexo.”
A new Bob Marley live release, “Live Forever: the Stanley Theatre, Pittsburgh PA 9/23/1980,” is on course for a top 10 entry as well. If it starts in the top tier, it will be Marley’s first top 10 — and just his second ever — since “Rastaman Vibration” peaked at No. 8 in 1976. (“Live Forever” could actually end up as the highest-charting album of Marley’s entire career.)
Certainly, Marley’s catalog of work is “Legend”-ary, and some may wonder how his greatest hits package “Legend” could have missed the top 10. The album — which is certified as having sold 10 million in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America — initially only reached No. 54 in 1984. Its so-so peak belies the album’s ultimate success: The title has been a consistent seller and continues to rack up big numbers. Last year in the United States it sold 253,000, while in 2009 it moved 342,000.
Food for thought: “Legend” sold more last year than major 2010 new releases from My Chemical Romance (“Danger Days…;” 198,000), Ne-Yo (“Libra Scale;” 223,000) and Corinne Bailey Rae (“The Sea;” 230,000).