Toby Keith Distributes 204,000 Ford Ads Throughout America

Toby Keith’s Big Dog Daddy and its back-of-the-book Ford ad (not to mention the actually not-that-bad, if chorusless, song “High Maintenance Woman”) topped this week’s Billboard 200, selling 204,000 copies. The album is Keith’s third No. 1 album on the chart; the total is way off from the first-week sales of his previous album, White Trash With Money, which debuted at No. 2 in April 2006 after shifting 330,000 units.

Biggest Debuts: Coming in at No. 2 was Fabolous, whose album From Nothin’ To Somethin’ sold 159,000 copies; DJ Khaled’s We The Best entered the charts at No. 8, selling 79,000 copies. (That’s just enough to give one to every guest rapper on “We Takin’ Over.”) The reissue of the Traveling Wilburys’ catalog came in right behind that at No. 9, with The Traveling Wilburys Collection selling 78,000 copies. The lower reaches of the top 20 were full of debuts: Queens Of The Stone Age’s Era Vulgaris sold 52,000 copies and entered the chart at No. 14; the charity compilation Instant Karma came in at No. 15 and moved 49,000 units; Eddie Levert Sr. and Gerald Levert’s Something to Talk About sold 42,000 copies and came in at No. 19; and Paramore’s Riot! rounded out the top 20, selling 42,000 copies.

Charting The Decline: Album sales clocked in at 9.58 million units this week, an increase of 9.5% from last week. The year-to-year decline was 7.9%–10.4 million albums were sold a year ago this week–but, like this year, only the top three albums clocked in at more than 100,000 units sold.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Until Linkin Park falls out of the top 10–they’re currently at No. 6, having sold 82,000 copies of Minutes To Midnight last week–they’ve got this category on lockdown. And since Chester Bennington has announced that he’s ditching solo-career plans to work with the band full-time, we suspect that they’ll be here for a good long while.

Toby Keith’s ‘Big Dog’ Heads Straight To No. 1 [Billboard]