Oprah did think that Lin Zhimo and Shakira's album would be a big hit, and she also thought that this album would make Lin Zhimo and Shakira, who sang songs, popular, but she didn't expect the sales of this album to be so good.

August 2002 was a very ordinary month, but for Lin, it was destined to be the most memorable month of his life, as his first English-language album officially landed in the United States.

The main promotion of this album is naturally the "flag flying" song in the World Cup, but Sony Music has also spent a lot of thought on several other songs in this album.

Under the three-dimensional bombardment of paper media, television media and online media, this album called "MIX" has also won huge attention. Although the United States has always been known as a football desert, for some reason, some movies and songs about football are very popular, and this album is just that.

The album went on sale on August 1st, and when the album sold in the first week on August 5th, everyone was surprised, not too little, but too much - MIX sold as many as 150,000 copies in the first week!

You must know that August 1st is not the traditional date of the release of the album, but Thursday, so it seems that the second week of sales of this album is worth seeing.

The weekly sales of an album in the United States are counted from Monday and then to the end of Sunday, so the sales of the first week of the album are counted from the Thursday of release to the end of Sunday for these four days. MIX reached a satisfactory 150,000 sheets.

The first week of sales was in the top 50 of the Billboard 200 album chart, so you can look forward to the sales of the second week. Because Lin Zhimo and Shakira are not very influential in the American market after all, and relying on the excellent song quality of this album, the sales of this album should be on an upward curve for a certain period of time.

And this album finally lived up to everyone's expectations, and the sales exceeded 300,000 in one fell swoop in the second week, reaching a staggering 360,000 copies!

This number immediately pushed the MIX album to No. 8 on the Billboard 200 album chart, squeezing into the top ten!

And a series of music reviews about this album have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

"I think this year is destined to be a special year for the music scene, and I wrote in my article a few months ago that rap songs are almost in decline, not that sales are bad. It's that the singer is a little green. But right now. Eminem slapped me the face with "The Eminem Show", and the album has sold four million copies so far, and sales are rising; Just the other day, I was still talking. Rap songs may be really inclusive. But only a white man like Eminem can accomplish something. However, today I heard MIX, and I heard a Chinese rap music. From this album, I saw an unprecedentedly bright future for rap songs! A Chinese from the mysterious East. Conquer me completely with his rap. Now, let's remember the name - JemLin! The name is destined to be remembered in the history of American music! ”

The above remarks appeared in the entertainment forum of Yahoo.com, and the writer was not a nobody, but Mike Murphy, a veteran music critic on the site for many years. Mr. Grant. Some of his music reviews on Yahoo are often quoted by some newspapers because he is always open-mouthed but frank and sincere, and this kind of highly personal comments has won him a large number of fans, and his article has also made many people who follow the Internet know the name Lin Zhimo for the first time.

No one knows how influential Yahoo Music's music review article was, after all, the online world has shown unparalleled influence, but after the dot-com bubble of 2000, many people have asserted that the Internet is like this.

But compared to Yahoo Music's ethereal impact on the online world, a music review of the MIX album published by the world-famous music magazine "Rolling Stone" has attracted a lot of attention.

Rolling Stone magazine has a huge influence in the global music market, not only because of their huge fame, but also because of their professionalism, persistence, and sincerity over the years.

Rolling Stone's most popular music critic was Mark Brown. Burgess too. Mark. Burgess, 48, has been a music critic for Rolling Stone magazine for more than 15 years, and he has been able to hold on to this job for so many years because of his heartfelt love for music.

It is precisely for this reason that he has great expectations for the works of some musicians, he expects to see very good works, and can see music works that can bring joy and insight to everyone, but it is precisely because of this that his vision of these music works sent to his desk is much stricter than that of other music critics.

Here in Mark Burgess, the perfect score for a musical work is 10, but there are surprisingly few works that have allowed him to score more than 9 points in the past ten years, but every music album that has scored 9 has proven to be a classic.

These experiences gradually made Mark Burgess's comments a kind of musical vane, and some musicians even said that it was harder to get Mark's praise than to win a Grammy.

And now, when everyone opened the new Rolling Stone magazine on August 10, they were surprised to find that Mark Burgess actually gave a high score of 8.9 for a music magazine called MIX.

This has led many people to take a very strong interest in this album.

"There is no doubt that this music album is the highest quality album in recent years, and if I removed the songs from this album that were not written by JemLin, I would give it a 9.1 points!"

Mark Burgess's opening sentence immediately surprised everyone, 9.1 points!

The last time he gave a 9.1 was in the last century, and I can't imagine that someone would be able to win this honor again.

At the same time, everyone who saw this magazine was also very interested in this singer named JemLin, and continued to look down.

"It's a compilation album made by two people – but it seems to me that doesn't seem necessary, because Jem's songs alone can hold this album up."

"Although I love all these songs, if I say that my favorite is 'TeenageLife', it is not because of the melody of this song - the melodies of several songs on this album are beautiful and beautiful, but because of the kind of care for children expressed in this song. Especially when the children's voice at the beginning of the song first appeared, there was only one word in my mind, and that was the sound of nature. These voices like a group of singing angels suddenly transported me to heaven, and I never knew that a song would have such an effect if a child sang back to such an effect. ”

"Speaking of which, I think you must be very curious about JemLin, but this comment is just a review of the music, and I won't comment too much about the author, so let's let you find out for yourself."

Everybody saw Mark. Burgess felt like he had been tricked when he said this, and he praised Lin Zhimo's song in the front, but in the end, he didn't know how the lyricist was, which was no different from advertising for Lin Zhimo. But despite the upset, anyone who saw the magazine had the urge to go and see the album.

In fact, Lin Zhimo still took some ingenuity in the release of the album, such as using a relatively thick makeup on the album cover, and a dark side, and did not completely show his own appearance, so that if you just listen to the album, then no one will find out whether Lin Zhimo's voice is a Chinese or an American.

This is not Lin Zhimo's unfounded worries, but a preparation to prevent subconscious behavior. It's like if a Vietnamese singer suddenly releases an album in China, without knowing the quality of the song, if you know that he is a Vietnamese singer, you will have a more or less strange vision in your heart, not necessarily discrimination, but double standards.

Lin Zhimo was also worried about this, so he deliberately hid his face, and even lowered his voice a little to make his voice sound more rich and resonant.

So in the midst of Lin Zhimo's apprehension, Shakira's excitement and Sony Music's expectations, the sales of this album in the third week actually exceeded 560,000 again!

And this time, it became the number one of the Billboard 200 album chart overnight!

The number one album of the American Billboard!

Founded in 1894, Billboard has become the world's most authoritative list for measuring the popularity of songs after more than 100 years of development. Billboard is based on sales, radio on-demand, converted into points, and then listed on various charts, the most famous of which are the album charts (Top 200 album chart) and singles charts (Hot 100 singles chart), as well as charts in different music categories.

This chart with a history of more than 100 years is not a small list, some singers can't even reach the top 10 of the chart in their lifetime, but Lin Zhimo actually reached the top of the number one album list on his first album released in the United States, and he became the top of the list in three weeks, which can be said to be a miracle.

However, the surprise is not over, Lin Zhimo's "NotAfraid" and Shakira's "OnlyGirl" actually occupy the third and fourth positions in the singles chart, respectively, and two songs in the top five are from the same album, which stunned everyone who followed the changes on the Billboard charts. (To be continued......)