All that said, I’m really wondering what is going on with Brad Paisley’s current over-promotion of his new album via social media. Almost twice a day on his Facebook page, there’s a new post promoting his new album – including a completely transparent incident of Paisley “going rogue” and releasing 3-second snippets of the songs off his new album against the wishes of his label.
In fact, in under a week, there have been at least 16 posts relating to his new album or to him “leaking” his new album.
So what is it that’s driving this? Possibly it’s the fact that Paisley’s past two singles before “River Bank” failed to crack the Top 10, even on country charts – the first time in Paisley’s career two consecutive singles have failed to hit such a mark. In fact, all three singles from Wheelhouse failed to crack the Top 5 on the US Country Chart – also a first in Paisley’s career. In fact, up until his single “Camouflage,” 17 consecutive singles charted at Number 1 or 2, before “Camouflage” froze at Number 15.
Furthering this trend, Wheelhouse was his first album, not including his largely-instrumental album Play, to not be certified at least Gold by the RIAA.
Paisley is setting his bar very high with the amount of promotion going into this album. He needs this album to live up to the hype. He needs the album to achieve not just commercial success and resounding reviews from fans, but he needs critical acclaim as well. He needs the singles to achieve radio success. Having only been sixteen months since his last album, and having written or co-written all but one song on the album, he needs it to sounds as if this album is a product of years’ worth of effort. Because that’s what his social media campaign has made it seem like.