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New Third Day Record, Wherever You Are, Tops Charts

Third Day debuts its eighth national release Wherever You Are at No. 1 on SoundScan’s Top Christian and Combined charts and No. 8 on the Billboard Top 200 Chart, the only Christian title in the Top Ten. With 62,561 in sales its first week, this is the band’s highest street week debut. Wherever You Are is No. 1 on SoundScan’s Christian digital album chart and also claims the highest Christian debut position in the history of SoundScan’s digital album chart at No. 3 behind new albums from Blink-182 and Santana, and ahead of first-week releases by Diana Krall and Imogen Heap.

In addition, “Cry Out to Jesus,” the first radio single off Wherever You Are, maintains the top spot on R&R’s Adult Contemporary Indicator chart for a second straight week.

Media response to the band and the new album has also been tremendous. CNN anchor Kathleen Kennedy praised the band’s new music, and its commitment to helping those impacted in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, during a live feature on CNN Headline News Nov.1 while the band’s hometown newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, offered this street-day review:

If Matchbox Twenty, or U2 for that matter, released this album – Christian lyrics and all – it would be among the year’s best-selling rock albums. It could be anyway, given that Third Day is among the biggest acts in the sacred music world. But maybe it’s time to stop pigeonholing these guys as a Christian and, after all, their muscular songs hold up well against secular contemporaries. So do their production values, which is unsurprising given that the disc was recorded at local mega-studio Southern Tracks. The album-opening “Tunnel” could be a modern rock radio hit, and the album-closing “Rise Up” could be a theme song for post-Katrina New Orleans, providing the same service that Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” did for post-Sept. 11 New York, in between are any number of durable tunes that uplift without browbeating. This isn’t just good Christian music. This is good music, period.

Maintaining a passion for helping those in need, Third Day supports Habitat for Humanity, DATA and World Vision’s Hope Child initiative.

Provided by Essential Records