.

Justin Timberlake's 'Suit and Tie' Set to Outsell 'SexyBack'

New single projected to move between 330,000 and 350,000 downloads

January 17, 2013 4:20 PM ET
Justin Timberlake
Justin Timberlake in 2009.
Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Justin Timberlake's comeback single, "Suit and Tie," is on track to sell an estimated 330,000 to 350,000 downloads in its first week, making it his best sales week ever for a song, Billboard reports.

Though the song is currently only available on iTunes, early forecasts put sales for "Suit and Tie" – the first single from Timberlake's long-awaited new album The 20/20 Experience – around 400,000. While it may not hit that mark, the new estimate greatly surpasses first week sales for 2006's "SexyBack," which had 250,000 downloads.

Photos: Justin Timberlake Through the Years

"Suit and Tie" will debut on Billboard's Hot 100 this week, most likely in the charts' lower half, on the strength of radio play alone. Next week, however, once sales and streaming are factored in, the track could compete for the top spot.

Only seven songs in the past year have debuted with 300,000 or more sales, with the biggest seller being Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" at 623,000. 

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prev
Music Main Next

blog comments powered by Disqus
Daily Newsletter

Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
marketing partners.

X

We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

More Song Stories entries »