THE BETTER LIFE
The Better Life is the debut studio album by American rock band 3 Doors Down, released on February 8, 2000. It has become 6 times Platinum since release. This is the only album on which lead singer Brad Arnold played drums. “Kryptonite”, “Loser”, and “Be Like That” all reached the Billboard Hot 100 charts, peaking at No. 3, No. 55, and No. 24, respectively. The Better Life sold 6 million copies worldwide. The album peaked at position No. 1 in the Heatseekers Albums chart. It is the band’s best-selling album to date, with sales of over 5,653,000 copies in the United States, as of July 2014. (More from Wikipedia)
It has been a long time since a record grabbed me the way the Invisible Eyes did. I was reminded of the first time that I heard “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down (the most successful rock band from the Mississippi Gulf Coast region) on the local alternative-rock radio station WCPR: I cranked the radio up full blast after I heard the first four or five notes, and I bet I hadn’t done that for at least 20 years. Their debut album, The Better Life (also the name of a foundation that the band established not long after) was released in 2000 and was the 11th best selling album that year, with worldwide sales of more than 6 million copies. “Kryptonite” was released nationally and also became a big hit, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 single charts. It was exciting to follow the progress of the single and the album; the local paper, the Sun Herald would show the 3 Doors Down music on the national charts in bold print.
(December 2012)
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The biggest rock band to come out of our area, 3 Doors Down (from the community of Escatawpa near Pascagoula) had a #3 hit song “Kryptonite” and a hit album The Better Life in 2000. The song was a radio hit here for years before that though, and I have already told the story of how much I loved the song and how hard I worked to at last find that early demo CD, 3 Doors Down. They are still going strong: Their fifth album Time of My Life (2011) debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 charts; and their two previous albums, Seventeen Days (2005) and 3 Doors Down (2008) hit #1. Next year, the band celebrates the 20th year since its founding, and 3 Doors Down has sold 20 million albums.
(December 2015)
