Who Charted?: Norah Jones Is Everybody’s Favorite Valentine

noah | February 21, 2007 2:05 am
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Norah Jones performed the neat trick of failing upward this week. Not Too Late, her third album, experienced an 11% drop in sales, but its 211,000 copies sold were enough to help her reclaim the top spot on the Billboard 200 in the album’s third week on the chart.

The real story, however, came from post-Grammy bounces. This week’s top 10 was littered with artists who got some face time on the Grammys: the Dixie Chicks jumped from No. 72 to No. 8, Corinne Bailey Rae moved up to No. 4 from No. 9, Justin Timberlake inched up to No. 7 (from No. 10), and John Mayer barrelled from No. 29 to No. 10. Even the compilation of Grammy-nominated songs Grammy Nominees 2007 got in on the bouncing action, moving up from No. 7 to No. 3.

Biggest Debuts: Gerald Levert’s posthumous In My Songs entered the chart at No. 2; the album sold 165,000 copies, resulting in the late soul singer’s best chart position ever and his highest one-week sales tally of the SoundScan era. Lucinda Williams’ West debuted at No. 14, selling 57,000 copies.

Biggest Slides: Fall Out Boy’s Infinity On High took a 50% sales hit, dropping from the top spot to No. 5; other than that, and Jones’ dip, the upper tier of the charts was filled with records that had sizeable sales gains. Some albums–like Daughtry and Akon’s Konvicted–saw their chart position slip despite selling more copies than they did last week.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: The band that inspired this category holds steady at No. 15 this week; All The Right Reasons even experienced an uptick in sales. It’s not the result of a Grammy bounce, so we’re just guessing that the shopping masses, confused by the prospect of actually being in a position to buy CDs, picked up Reasons in a panic, not realizing the medocrity that they’d be unleashing on their ears until long after they’d paid for the album.

When Cupid Meets Grammy [Billboard]