Blackbird

At the start of 2006 the band said the writing was two thirds done. On 8 February 2007 they announced it was finished and that they were going into the studio, and on 11 May the guitarist Mark Tremonti reported that the recording and mixing were complete with only small details left. On 23 July the single's release date and the track listing were made public, and three days later the band put "Ties That Bind" and the single "Rise Today" on their MySpace page. Before release, on 24 August, Universal Republic Records put a page of e-cards on its own home page carrying the then-unreleased "Before Tomorrow Comes", "Watch Over You", "Buried Alive" and "Come to Life"; so many people found them so quickly that the page came down the next day. It reached number 13 on the Billboard 200 on 47,000 copies in its first week and had sold 227,000 by December 2008. The marketing was poor and mainstream success limited, but the early reviews were mostly positive, with praise for the songwriting and the playing. The British edition, on 8 October, added the bonus track "We Don't Care at All"; a Best Buy exclusive added "The Damage Done" and "New Way to Live", and a Walmart version came with a DVD about the making of the record. The running order here is the original's as printed.