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Ronan Keating has hit back at media reports criticising him for selling only 181 copies of his latest album in Ireland.
Despite weeks of heavy promotion, midweek sales figures for Keating’s latest release Fires are low, failing to reach200 in his home country.
But the Boyzone star has hit back at his critics, insisting that physical album sales are traditionally low in Ireland, and pointing out that the midweek number one – Beacon by Two Door Cinema Club – had only sold around 700 copies.
In a furious phone call to the Strawberry Alarm Clock show on Ireland’s FM104, Keating said: “It's rubbish. The number one album midweek here sold about 700 - it's not like sales for anything are sky high…Album sales in Ireland are never going to keep you in Gucci - you do it to make a presence.”
He went on to criticise the accuracy of the sales figures themselves, which apparently didn’t include download sales of Fires.
”They didn't include my download sales either and the downloads were quite substantially more than that but I'm not going to get into a battle about it.
Despite the seemingly low sales figures, the album is currently sitting at number 12 in the Irish album chart, a position Keating claimed he “couldn’t be happier with”.
And Keating plans to continue the album’s promotional blitz in a bit for it to crack the top three in the UK.
“Hopefully I'll be top three in the UK. When I saw what was written here in Ireland I was like, 'What the hell?' I mean, it's number four in the UK midweek charts already”, he said.
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Keating has previously outlined how hard he has worked on the album, reuniting with the team behind his hit ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’ and calling Fires a return to ‘proper pop’.
The album comes in the aftermath of his split from wife Yvonne, although he claims not to have written any songs about their break-up.
Yvonne Keating even recommended the record as ”worth a listen“ in her column for Ireland’s VIP magazine, going as far as saying : “I’m sure it will be another number one”.
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