T.I. Captures This Week’s Chart Zeitgeist

T.I. and his alter ego won their tag-team match against the new-look Smashing Pumpkins on the charts this week, despite a 63% sales drop for T.I. Vs. T.I.P.. The 175,000-copy sales tally was enough to top this week’s Billboard 200, while Billy Corgan and company’s 145,000-unit sales total for Zeitgeist resulted in a No. 2 chart entry.

Biggest Debuts: Interpol’s Our Love To Admire sold 73,000 copies, which was enough to land them at No. 4 on this week’s chart, while rounding out the top 10 were indie heroes Spoon, who sold 46,000 copies of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. (An interesting side note: Digital totals for the two albums were strikingly similar, with Admire selling 18,700 e-copies and Ga moving 17,700.) Aly & AJ entered the chart at No. 15 with 39,000 copies sold of Insomniatac, and 37,000 people bought the soundtrack to the movie of the musical version of the John Waters movie Hairspray, putting it at No. 20 for the week–even though it hasn’t even come out yet. Oh, and for you weener (sp?) dog aficionados out there, Danzig’s Lost Tracks Of Danzig sold 4,600 copies and debuted at No. 164.

Notable Jumps: In the distance, you can hear thousands of teenagers jumping up and down and yelling in anticipation for High School Musical 2, and its assault on the charts is beginning; the soundtrack to the original movie jumped to No. 80, selling 8,900 copies, and albums by stars Ashley Tisdale (No. 135) and Corbin Bleu (No. 141) vaulted back into the top 200.

Charting The Decline: A total of 8.3 million albums were sold last week, a 4.9% decline from last week’s total of 8.73 million and 10.8% off of last year’s total (9.3 million units).

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Let’s turn it over to Billboard.biz: “Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” sets a new record for the most weekly plays on the CHR/Top 40 radio chart, as it registers 10,088 spins for the tracking week ending July 15. “Big,” which spends its second week at No. 1 on the chart, bests the record Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” (9,657 detections) set on the June 9, 2006, chart.” She sold 50,000 copies of The Dutchess this week, too. This assault on proper enunciation must stop!

T.I. Holds Off Pumpkins, Interpol To Remain No. 1 [Billboard]