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After reports of dissatisfaction, panic and other pre-release drama, executives at Columbia Records are feeling vindicated by the positive early returns for Beyonce's new album, "4."
"All the speculation that gets around is frustrating when it's just not true," Columbia/Epic Label Group Chairman Rob Stringer tells Billboard.biz. "The story about us being unhappy with the record and stuff is just not true. There's never been any doubt or conversations about moving the record or changing it... Those conversations never existed. We're really, really happy with it."
The label is particularly pleased with sales reports from "4's" initial days of official availability. Stringer says early indications are that the album will debut at No. 1 in as many as 14 countries, including the U.S., and in the Top 3 worldwide. It went triple-platinum in Brazil on its first day of sale, while U.K. projections have it selling "well over" 90,000 copies in its first week -- which more than doubles "I Am...Sasha Fierce's" roll-out in 2008 -- and 1.6 million over its lifespan. The album's second single, "Best Thing I Never Had," is No. 1 on the U.K. iTunes charts and currently sits at No. 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 29 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts....
"She's Not There," the first episode of True Blood's fourth season, thrusts us right into the mayhem and supernatural madness we were trying to figure out when last season came to an end. We begin with Sookie Stackhouse crossing over into faerie land, and get adequately briefed on the ins and outs of faeries, witches, werepanthers and shape-shifters — but it's the vampire storyline that remains most compelling (Spoiler Alert: Bill Compton and Eric Northman's power switch has a lot to do with it). Though this season, like its predecessors, closely follows the same numbered volume of Charlaine Harris' best-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels, the series runs the risk of confusion over camp with the ever-increasing number of characters it introduces. Here, the first of our weekly species-by-species recaps of True Blood, season four:
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