Carrie Underwood Leads The Country Carnival

noah | October 31, 2007 1:30 am
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Carrie Underwood’s Carnival Ride whooshed out of stores last week, as the American Idol winner’s second album sold 527,000 copies to debut at No. 1 on the SoundScan charts. Carnival Ride is Underwood’s first No. 1 album, and it’s one of three country records to debut in the top three of this week’s chart.

Biggest Debuts: The Robert Plant/Alison Krauss duets album Raising Sand came in at No. 2, selling 112,000 copies, while Gary Allan completed the twangy trifecta by selling 69,000 copies of Living Hard. Behind them at No. 4 was System Of A Down lead singer Serj Tankian, whose Elect The Dead sold 66,000 copies; Coheed and Cambria’s No World For Tomorrow entered at No. 6, moving 62,000 progged-out units. Completing the top-10 debuts was Seether, who sold 57,000 copies of Finding Beauty In Negative Space to people who don’t get embarrassed over buying records with terrible covers around the country.

Notable Jumps: Not much in the way of notable album-sales spikes–aside from Sugarland and Taylor Swift seeing bumps, thanks in part no doubt to the many country fans who showed up to buy record sales this week–but it’s definitely “time for people to freak out about seasonally appropriate music for a Halloween party” on the digital tracks chart. “Thriller” jumped up to No. 40, selling 20,000 e-singles, while “The Monster Mash,” “Ghostbusters,” “Werewolves Of London,” and the theme to Halloween all popped into that chart’s top 200.

Dropping Off: Waiting to see when Jennifer Lopez’s Brave breaks the six-figure mark is going to be almost as fun as waiting to see when Curtis broke seven figures (that finally happened last week). This week, it skidded from No. 38 to No. 59, selling 14,000 copies. That’s a total of 85,000 copies sold so far. Well, at least her total copies sold have exceeded a 1:1 ratio with her album-cover budget!

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Kid Rock’s Rock N’ Roll Jesus hung tough in its third week on the chart, taking a 21% sales hit and falling from No. 2 to No. 7. You know what that means, right? The Waffle House ploy worked.

The top 20, with sales totals in parentheses: 1. Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride (527,000) 2. Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, Raising Sand (112,000) 3. Gary Allan, Living Hard (69,000) 4. Serj Tankian, Elect The Dead (66,000) 5. Josh Groban, Noel (65,000) 6. Coheed & Cambria, No World For Tomorrow (62,000) 7. Kid Rock, Rock N’ Roll Jesus (61,000) 8. Rascal Flatts, Still Feels Good (57,000) 9. Seether, Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces (57,000) 10. High School Musical 2 soundtrack (57,000) 11. Neil Young, Chrome Dreams II (54,000) 12. Bruce Springsteen, Magic (51,000) 13. Juanes, La Vida … Es Un Ratico (47,000) 14. Reba McEntire, Reba Duets (44,000) 15. Colbie Caillat, Coco (43,000) 16. Kanye West, Graduation (43,000) 17. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (37,000) 18. Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, souljaboytellem.com (35,000) 19. Keyshia Cole, Just Like You (32,000) 20. matchbox twenty, Exile On Mainstream (30,000)