Countdown to the new album - first indication of commercial/critical success

talk about a mixed bag,there must be a pick n mix joke in their somewhere.
 
Not sure that it was particularly clear but the 4th proper music magazine review has now been published (in Classic Pop).
If memory serves, they were quite hard on World Peace (2 stars) but they've given Low in High School 4 stars.
It's a similar review to the others i.e. lots of praise for the music but quite a few reservations about the words.
So we've had 2 stars in Uncut, 3 stars in Mojo, 4 stars in Q and now 4 stars in Classic Pop.
I don't think it'll go below 2 (music too good) or above 4 (too many clunky lyrics) but expect the record company will be pretty pleased with how it's all panning out so far.
 
Well, the votes are effectively in, folks.
Thankfully, for Steve and the record company (and crushingly for our trolling clowns), that first proper review (Uncut's 5/10) proved to be an outlier, as we statisticians would say. The outlier at the other end was a 9/10.
The average score must currently be somewhere between a 6 and a 7. This is no disaster but it is significantly worse than World Peace which consistently received 8s (in the UK press at least). There won't be no Mercury nomination for Low in High School.
Interestingly tho, the single (Spent the Day in Bed) was a much bigger radio hit than Istanbul, so what influences sales more - reviews or songs on the radio? We will see.
The trolling clowns kept banging on ad nauseam (there's a surprise!) that virtually no-one was streaming Spent the Day on Spotify despite it having good radio exposure which, to these simple folk, meant no-one liked it. But they could well actually be right.
So, with worse reviews than World Peace, and a single that allegedly no-one much liked, there's a good chance that Low in High School will do worse than World Peace's first week sales of 18,000 (a post Maladjusted low). The trolls will be expecting this, and it will (credit where it's due) prove them right about no-one liking the single.
First week sales don't always indicate an album's commercial fate but they usually do for Morrissey. In his 30 year solo career, just two singles have managed to push an album back up the charts (they usually disappear for good after just a few weeks). Those singles were Every Day is Like Sunday and First of the Gang to Die. Low in High School will need to have a similarly catchy song, it will need to be released as a single, and radio stations will need to get behind it, if the album is to avoid (possibly) being the lowest selling since Maladjusted.
 
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