The Kelly admin on 26 Sep 2002 02:05 am
I swear I only bought one copy!
Cumulative total sales of the other 19 singles in the top 20: 34,000.
Sales of Kelly’s single: 236,000. That’s just 48,000 copies less than the number one album last week (68,000 _more_ than the #2 album). It’s also 35 times what the number 2 single sold.
[I am aware that the singles market in the US is non-existent, but still, 236k is a lot o' CDs when you consider there are only two songs on the disc.]
The new record for the biggest single-week leap to No. 1 in the history of Billboard’s Hot 100: 52-1. Old record holder: The Beatles; new record holder: Kelly Clarkson.
Billboard article.
The songs are cookie-cutter ballads that were banged out in a few weeks so those sales are largely the result of Kelly having a boatload of fans and her ability to make anything sound good.
The mastering of the CD is a bit sub-par. Every one of her live performances sounds better than what’s on the CD, the problem is that all the live performances gain a lot of noise (relatively) from being TV broadcasts.
I don’t know what they did in the studio to suck the life out of the recordings… maybe they didn’t use Memorex tapes. 
The video for one of the singles (it’s a double-A side) just premiered on TRL, so look for that to kick some ass at MTV tomorrow.
I do have an issue with the video, or rather, the director, which I shall elucidate upon in the next post.