YEP, IT’S A NUMBER-ONE JACK JOHNSON ALBUM: Jack Johnson looks exactly the same today as he did in 2010, or 2008, or even 2006 – he’s still the laid-back surfer dude from Hawaii with the soothing curly hair and the muscular forearm strumming an acoustic guitar. His music hasn’t changed, either, near as I can tell – “I Got You,” the love song on his latest album From Here to Now to You, begins with the most relaxing whistling on a record in years. Yet From Here to Now to You sold 117,000 copies in its debut week, compared to 2010’s To the Sea (243,000), 2008’s Sleep Through the Static (375,000) and 2006’s Curious George soundtrack (163,000). Johnson streamed the new album on iTunes a week in advance – a smart idea to compete with pirates downloading the album for free, but most likely these days, not a formula for boosting the album sales to 2008 or 2010 levels.
Read the whole story at rollingstone.com