Critical reception

Upon its release, Live It Up received generally mixed reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

, which assigns a normalized

Standard score

In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...

 rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average

Weighted mean

The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...

 score of 45, based on 4 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Stephen Thomas Erlewine is a senior editor for Allmusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for Allmusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes. He is also frontman and guitarist for the Ann Arbor-based band Who Dat?Erlewine is the nephew...

 of Allmusic gave the album a mixed review saying, "DeWyze can wrangle a pleasant melody, particularly when he’s favoring sunswept SoCal folk-pop, but he can’t resist sabotaging his slight charms with a studied hamminess, adopting a gravelly growl whenever he wants to appear soulful and leaning so hard in his phrasing that he stumbles instead of shuffles."

Commercial reception

Live It Up sold 39,000 copies in its first week, debuting at #19 on the Billboard 200. The album spent 10 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 and, after an eight-week absence, returned to the chart at #96 following DeWyze's performance on the American Idol Season 10 Top 12 Results show. As of June 1, 2011, the album has sold 141,000 copies. Thus far, this is the lowest debut in units sold for an American Idol winner. DeWyze's album is also the second album of an American Idol winner (after Kris Allen

Kris Allen

Kristopher Neil "Kris" Allen is an American musician and singer-songwriter from Conway, Arkansas, and the winner of the eighth season of American Idol...

's self-titled debut, which premiered and peaked at #11) to not debut in the top 10 of the Billboard 200. The album's #19 debut marks the lowest position for an AI

American Idol

American Idol, titled American Idol: The Search for a Superstar for the first season, is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment...

winner.

Track listing

Chart positions

Chart	Peak position
US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...	19