Move over, Boss.
Denver’s No. 1 pop band, the Fray, became the country’s No. 1 pop band Wednesday, zooming to the top of Billboard magazine’s best-sellers chart with its second album. The group is the first Colorado act to debut an album in the coveted spot.
And they pushed Bruce Springsteen out of the lead position to get there.
“It’s big Fray day over here, and we couldn’t be happier,” Epic Records marketing honcho Scott Carter said Wednesday.
By the time “The Fray” album went on sale Feb. 3, the lead single, “You Found Me,” had already gone platinum digitally. Still, moving 179,000 full-length albums in one week proved surprising.
“Among acts that are still building an audience like the Fray, this is a pretty good debut,” said Billboard’s Silvio Pietroluongo. “And anytime you can best what you did with your prior album, I consider that a great success.”
The Fray’s numbers hold up. Springsteen debuted atop last week’s chart with 224,000 in sales of his “Working on a Dream,” but the “Twilight” soundtrack debuted at No. 1 with 165,000 in sales in November. Monster hit records from 2008 – Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III” and AC/DC’s “Black Ice – sold a million and 700,000 copies in their first weeks, respectively.
The Fray’s first record, “How to Save a Life,” topped out at No. 14 on the charts in late 2006, but it has gone on to sell nearly 2.4 million copies since its release in September 2005.
The band certainly felt the pressure of writing a successful follow-up throughout the recording of “The Fray.”
“Obviously the pressure was on everybody’s minds, and everybody talked about it outside the band environment,” singer-pianist Isaac Slade told The Post in January. “We couldn’t ignore it, but we managed to keep it outside of the creative process for the most part. We’d think about it in the morning when we drove to the studio, but the actual creation of the album all came down to the songs.”
It wasn’t only the band worrying.
“These record company people,” said guitarist Joe King, “they’re literally worried about their jobs.”
But Wednesday was a happy day at the Epic offices. “You Found Me” is already in the Top 5 on adult-contemporary radio stations, according to Carter – and the label hopes the song is about the crack the Top 10 of pop radio.
“And this is just the first single,” said Carter, who also noted that they haven’t yet picked the second single. “I’m sure we’ll be working singles from this album over the next 12 to 18 months.”
Will “The Fray” have the lasting power? – and endless stream of singles – of “How to Save a Life?” Billboard’s Pietroluongo says it could happen – but nothing’s a sure thing.
“It’s a different time and different era,” Pietroluongo said. “That album had a different kind of run. It started out and built and then built some more. You need to have a sustained chart run to make those numbers, and it’s too early to tell with this record. But given the early numbers and the radio and TV support and the fanbase, they definitely have what it takes to support those kind of numbers.”
