They always say so (Wrecking Ball, Shake It Off, What Do You Mean?)... They try to be "conservative"
They don't want to be embarrassed, which is a valid concern, but it doesn't work because they always end up embarrassing themselves somehow at some other point in time (see: High By The Beach incident).
i mean, not only might it break the sales record, but it broke the video streams in one day record, and is doing great on radio, so how the hell would it NOT debut at #1?
And with no radio deal. No big visuals, but a genius Xavier Dolan video. And she put the song on streaming services since the first moment. She had 2 million hits in a day on Spotify. And 1 million video likes in 30 hours. And maybe 1 million digital sales in a week. And 100k album preorders in a day, which is more than what most of the artists open during their first week sales. And she broke the VEVO record.
Aww I wanted her to do 1 million. I thought HDD said 400K in one day so then these could be the number sold in two days without the instant grat effect.