Who Charted?: Top 40 Retread Comp Bumps Off “Hannah Montana”

People who don’t bother with iTunes remain a vital demographic. The evidence? NOW 23–which collects such totally August faves as “London Bridge” and “Deja Vu”–entered this week’s Billboard 200 in the top slot, moving 337,000 copies in the U.S. While NOW‘s tallies did beat those of the No. 2 record handily, it should be noted that megacompilation’s first-week sales are off by a substantial amount– the seventh volume moved 621,000 copies in its first week, despite the presence of a Lifehouse song.

Biggest Debuts: The three records behind NOW were all new releases: Oprah fave Josh Groban’s I’m Cute And Classically Trained! came in at No. 2 with 270,000 scans; rehabbing country singer Keith Urban’s No, These Songs Aren’t All About Nicole debuted at No. 3, selling 267,000 copies; and Sugarland’s Wouldn’t We, As A Country Act, Make A Great Companion Purchase For Keith’s Album? entered the chart at No. 4, selling 211,000 copies. Jim Jones also had a top-10 debut, selling 94,000 copies and landing at No. 6.

Biggest Slides: Birdman and Lil Wayne’s Like Father, Like Son dropped to No. 7 this week, with a 59% sales decline; reigning No. 1 Hannah Montana fell to No. 5 this week, although its sales only drooped by 36%.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Completely Explicable Durability: Elton John, helped by an appearance stumping for his album on QVC, saw Captain and the Kid experience a 330% sales increase–enough to land him at No. 69, with 16,000 albums sold. Hey, Elton: Maybe you should see if the home-shopping outlet will start a record label? Clearly, they’re doing a better job at marketing you than Universal.

‘NOW 23’ Trumps Groban, Urban, Sugarland At No. 1 [Billboard]