Chloe Bailey Reveals She Regrets Waiting to Drop Her Second Single & Shares Thoughts on First Album Sales

so Chloe went on the call her daddy podcast and shared a lot of her career journey from Beyonce signing her and Halle after seeing their cover of Pretty Hurts starting her solo career while Halle was gone for years filming The Little Mermaid she said that she was surprised by the initial reaction of Have Mercy because at that time Chloe and Halle were definitely still underground as a group but then she posted this snippet of Have Mercy and it just went crazy on the internet and resulted in the VMAs reaching out wanting her to perform before the song was even out after Have Mercy Chloe waited eight months to drop her next single "Treat Me", which she admits that she now regrets. Everyone around me was like, "No, we have to make sure the next one's perfect." So even though I was creating music, we waited like eight months till I put out my next single. Which if I could rewind it, I would have just kept the momentum going because it's hard to build it back up. I love "Have Mercy" and "Treat Me". In fact, they're probably my two favorite Chloe songs and I do think that "Treat Me" would have been a smash hit if it was released closer to "Have Mercy". I feel like this did lead to the low sales of her debut album, especially because these two songs weren't even on the album at all. So kind of just caused some confusion with the rollout. But she did talk about how the album sold 10,000 units in the first week and how she received a lot of hate at the time because of this. But now that is a number that a lot of major label artists can't even reach. I think when I actually released my first album and it didn't sell the great amount that people wanted to, but it's the normal amount today. It was 10K, everyone was shunning me. I was like, "Oh my gosh, am I not as great as I thought?" Or everyone thought like they thought I was gonna be this big thing. So as I'm on tour, as I'm in press interviews, they're like, "Oh, how do you feel about the low selling numbers?" All this stuff, blah, blah, blah. But then the first night, everyone knows the song word for word. I'm like, "Hold on. Meet and greets, the whole tour was sold out." So I'm like, "Wait, I'm confused. See this online, then I see this in real life. What's happening?" I love that she talked about how the sales of the album didn't really match what she was seeing in real life at her concerts cause I remember at the time so many people were quick to call her a flop when these sales came out. Yeah, it might not have sold as much as she and her team were expecting, especially while "Have Mercy" was taking off. But it did give her a solid fan base that no matter what will show up to her tours and seeing every single word and that is way more important than just having a viral hit and not being able to sell out a tour at all. I did really like hearing her talk about this because for some reason, people hold her to such a high standard. Like I don't know if it's because she signed with Beyonce and they just expect her to like be this huge pop girl. But she is making the music that she wants to make. She's clearly happy with how her career is going and I think other people just need to leave her alone.