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Universal Records U.S., the label which signed Canadian siren Holly McNarland, will relaunch her Stuff album in America.
The Toronto-based singer-songwriter has done exceedingly well in Canada for a debut artist, but the release of Stuff in the U.S. in late Oct. and its debut single, "Numb", fell on deaf ears. SoundScan sales figures before Christmas were just short of 2,000 copies.
At home, it's a completely different story. To date, the album has been certified gold and SoundScanned 61,972 copies as of yesterday. The third single, "Coward", has just been serviced to radio. "In the States, it's a really tough time to put a new record out from a new artist `cause it's Christmas time," explains Tom Lewis, director of A&R at Universal Records U.S., who signed McNarland. "Everybody's putting out a greatest hits record. It's a big release period for established artists. For an artist, who's relatively unknown in the United States, to put a record out in the fall, is usually very tough and playlists are very tight to get a record on radio. So that's the basis for relaunching a record."
The label will stick with the first single, "Numb", a rock radio hit in Canada, and does not plan to alter or redirect its initial marketing plan. "There's nothing necessarily we need to do differently," says Universal's director of marketing, Derek Simon. "We just need to be persistent. We're going to continue to go with `Numb' because it sold records in Canada and it should sell records here. We don't want to let `Numb' come and go without another shot. "We believe Holly is an artist for multiple (radio) formats -- rock, modern rock and modern AC," says Simon, noting the fragmented formats that do not all exist in Canada. "It's really hard to get a new artist like Holly stand out if you're not going to get co-operation from radio. "We have our best support from modern AC, one is in Tampa called WMTX and another is in Sacramento, called KZZO. Both have programmers who have said, `we really like this record and we really believe in this artist. We'd like to help you break this artist.' Because of that, what we're doing is steering this record toward modern AC and then bring Holly back to modern rock and active rock."
Simon is confident McNarland will be as successful in the U.S. as in Canada. It's not a matter of giving Stuff a second chance rather than a continued effort by Universal U.S. to continue what it started. "I just don't view the countries as all that different and I don't believe Holly is translating into sales in Canada because she's Canadian," Simon says. "It's because her music really reaches people and we're just trying to find the avenues where we can reach people like that and start to get some sales."