more emotively, expressing melancholy qualities and hurt. On "I Can Be", Aaliyah sings from the perspective of an adulterous man's mistress who wants to be his foremost girlfriend. Alex Macpherson from The Guardian wrote that "Aaliyah's blank, numbed delivery" on the song "makes being the other woman seem like an emotionally masochistic form of self-medication". Biographer Christopher John Farley says that she "emotionally detail[s] a song" unlike on her previous albums and that "her gentle voice now seem[s] like something elemental, a kindly wind blowing through the branches of a big tree." According to Joshua Clover, Aaliyah pushes musical notes "into strange corners of syncopation's shifty architecture" on the more "shape-defying" tracks. Overall, "she makes the sonics tell the story, creating meaning outside the lyrics, pleasure beyond the hooks." Marketing and sales Aaliyah was originally issued by Blackground and Virgin in Japan on July 7, 2001, before its release in the United Kingdom on July 16 and in the United States on July 17. In the US, it debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 albums chart behind Songs in A Minor by Alicia Keys, selling 187,000 copies in the week of August 4. Although it was the highest sales week of Aaliyah's career, the album sold diminishingly over the next two months. The singer planned to embark on the largest concert tour of her career to support the album, while Blackground and Virgin—heavily invested in the record's success—wanted a single with a high chart placement to help increase sales. "We Need a Resolution" had been released as the lead single on April 13, but did not receive significant radio airplay and only reached number fifty-nine on the Billboard Hot 100. In August 2001, Aaliyah filmed a music video for "More Than a Woman" in Los Angeles and then travelled to the Bahamas to shoot a video for "Rock the Boat". But after its completion, she and several crew members who were returning to the US died in a plane crash on August 25. Blackground executives were uncertain when they would release the album's next single and video. Aaliyah had sold more than 447,000 copies by this point. The album's sales increased rapidly after Aaliyah died. News of her death was reported on the last day of Nielsen SoundScan's sales tracking week, during which Aaliyah sold 62,000 copies, a 41.5% increase from its past week's sales. The following week,