No matter what happens during the 49th annual Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, Mary J. Blige can hold her head up high.
The R&B star leads this year's field with eight nominations, and her 2005 album, "The Breakthrough," sold 1.8 million copies to become the 12th-highest seller last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Not bad for an artist whose 2003 release, "Love & Life," proved so disappointing that many thought her career had run its course.
"My customers went nuts over it," Chicago-based indie retailer George Daniels says of "Breakthrough." "It took off, and it kept on selling."
That's music to the ears of anyone in the recording industry, which has seen global sales plummet for the seventh consecutive year in the face of the increasing popularity of digital downloads. That rare artist who can come out of the gate strong -- "Breakthrough" sold roughly 727,000 copies in its first week of release -- and continue to move albums week after week is exactly what feeds industry lifeblood.
Of course, sales figures don't always translate into awards, and Blige will face stiff competition at the Staples Center ceremony from such artists as Corinne Bailey Rae, James Blunt and Dixie Chicks in two of the big four categories: song of the year and record of the year.
Grammy favors the Chicks, who have collected eight trophies thus far and also are in the running for the best album prize for "Taking the Long Way"; they will compete against Gnarls Barkley's "St. Elsewhere," Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Stadium Arcadium," John Mayer's "Continuum" and Justin Timberlake's "FutureSex/LoveSounds" for the night's biggest award.
Blige, who previously has won three Grammys, also is up for best female R&B vocal performance and best R&B song for the first single from "Breakthrough," "Be Without You," which went on to become her first No. 1 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart since 2001.
"The minute the song came into the building, people were saying this could be a Grammy contender," recalls Ashley Fox, a former marketing executive at Blige's Geffen Records label who now works with Blige as an independent consultant.
Executives had so much confidence in Blige's new material that they decided to move up the release date of "Breakthrough," putting it ahead of her planned greatest hits collection, "Reflections -- A Retrospective," which was issued in December 2006 instead.
Determined to help shape the campaign for the album, Blige insisted on attending weekly marketing strategy meetings with the label. Geffen took a broad approach designed to reach Blige's 12-50, largely female demographic, and TV appearances were plotted out with military precision to cover the spread.
Geffen turned to a number of corporate partners to cross-promote the release, including Verizon and Pepsi.
The onslaught certainly helped with sales -- whether it will help Blige walk away with coveted statuettes at the Grammys remains to be seen. Daniels is confident that Blige will take home five trophies at Sunday's event, and he predicts that sales for "Breakthrough" could increase 25% over the life of the Grammy campaign, with the majority of the sales coming after the CBS telecast.
Should she win, however, those sales could climb higher still. Norah Jones' "Come Away With Me," which spawned eight wins in 2003, returned to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 post-Grammys and sold nearly five times what it had sold the week prior to the awards ceremony. But Blige is taking no chances -- she's slated to sing on the show, and performers traditionally see even bigger increases in sales than winners.
Taken from Playfuls.com
