Lady Antebellum Bracing for Big First-Week Sales Numbers

Lady Antebellum are likely to smash sales expectations with their sophomore effort 'Need You Now' this week. The album is headed for a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 chart and is looking to sell more than originally thought.

On the day of the album's release (Jan. 26), industry executives felt it would sell around 325,000 copies, but as days went by, the projections went up to 350,000 and then grew to as much as 425,000 during the disc's first week of release. Whatever the sales numbers, the three had a lot more experience to draw from for this second record -- both professionally and personally.

"We wrote a lot," Lady A's Charles Kelley tells The Boot. "A whole lot, and you know, we wrote a lot of crap too ... the hardest thing is once you've had a little success, is then you go, 'OK, now I know what radio's wanting. I'm gonna write a radio hit.' And ... the best songs are the ones when you're not trying, and so the hardest thing for us was to go out there and go, 'Hey guys, let's write to write. Let's not try to write a radio song." So that was a challenge."

"This record," Charles continues, "we went and found a couple of really strong songs that we didn't write, and I'm just as proud of those as I am of the ones we wrote. And again, we're storytellers and not everything has to be a personal experience, but something you can relate to."

The lone female of the group, Hillary Scott, adds the personal touch. "The three of us have gotten a lot closer, 'cause we've gotten to know each other a lot better," she explains. "We've spent so much time together, and then we've all gone through things in our own personal lives to make us grow as individuals. Charles got married, I was in a relationship and got my heart completely broken, and Dave [Haywood] has had his personal experiences too, so we had all those things to pull from to bring to the table too."

High sales numbers are certainly rare these days, in any music format, and the last country album to debut with at least 400,000 copies sold was Taylor Swift's 'Fearless,' which came in at the top of the Billboard chart with 592,000. Lady A's self-titled 2008 debut came it at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart and scored a Top 5 debut (No. 4) on the Billboard 200. The final numbers for 'Need You Now' will be released tomorrow (Feb. 3).