Bullets in the Gun

Background

In an interview with Billboard, Keith talked about the recording for Bullets in the Gun, saying ""I'm in a great place right now, I probably wrote 40 or 50 songs in the last year and the songs are getting more and more happy. I did some movies, too, but now I'm just kicking back."

Critical reception

Upon its release, Bullets in the Gun received generally positive reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 76, based on 6 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".

Bill Friskics-Warren of The Washington Post complimented the tracks on the release, saying "There isn't a weak track on the record, and most of the songs [...] are pretty terrific". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic gave the album 4½ out of 5 stars and called it "a lean, tight record", stating "Bullets in the Gun winds up being the Toby Keith album with the lightest touch since 2006’s White Trash with Money." Matt Bjorke with Roughstock commented on the album, saying "Bullets in the Gun is an interesting album and it feels like a joyful mixture of songs about different stages of relationships and life" and called it "Keith’s best album of at least the last five years". Gary Graff with Billboard Magazine gave a favorable review of the album, saying "It's full of shoot-from-the- hip cleverness".

Jessica Phillips with Country Weekly gave it three stars, commented saying that "the album [is packed] with songs meant to heal (or at least dull) a broken heart". Jon Caramanica with The New York Times referred to Bullets in the Gun as "[Keith's] most scattershot album to date; a jumble of attitudes and tactics" and said "[he] is singing without conviction on songs that are mere archetypes and lack any of his signature gestures".

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number one on both the US Billboard 200 chart and Top Country albums chart, selling 71,000 copies in its first week of release. It's the smallest debut at number one since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking the chart in May 1991. In its second week of release, the album dropped to number nine on the Billboard 200 selling 30,000 copies. In its third week of release, the album fell to number twenty one on the Billboard 200, selling 17,923 copies. As of the chart dated May 7, 2011, the album has sold 323,880 copies in the US.