Abba Takes It All (This Week, At Least)

noah | August 13, 2008 1:00 am

mammamia.jpg
Hands up, those of you who thought that the soundtrack to the big-screen adaptation of Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, and Amanda Seyfried as people who just bust out into Abba songs at seemingly random intervals, would be this week’s top album. Anyone? No? Well, bully on you; the collection sold 131,000 copies, a 5% week-to-week drop that was enough to best both Miley Cyrus’ Breakout (102,000 sold) and Sugarland’s Love On The Inside (91,000 sold) for the top spot.

Biggest Debuts: The best-selling new album this week: Lessons In Love by Idolator favorite Lloyd, which moved 51,000 copies and entered at No. 7. Meanwhile, other-blogs favorite Conor Oberst bowed at No. 15 with his self-titled Merge Records debut, selling 29,000 copies. At No. 10 was country singer Heidi Newfield, whose solo debut What Am I Waiting For sold 34,000 copies; No. 12 belonged to another country artist, Keith Anderson, whose C’mon! moved 32,000 units.

Notable Jumps: M.I.A.’s Kala is finally starting to feel a lift from “Paper Planes” being featured in the trailer for Pineapple Express; sales saw a 32% week-to-week jump (11,000 copies), and the album leapt from No. 62 to No. 45 on the chart. Even more impressive is that some 7,200 copies off that total were off the digital version, which has been featured on iTunes’ front page in the run-up to the flick’s release. (Amazon had it for a buck-ninety-nine this week, and we’ll see the effects of that pricing on next week’s chart.)

Dropping Off: Sugarland’s Love On The Inside had its chart debut when the album’s “special edition” came out, and a second-week boost to No. 1 when the plain old CD came out. This week, though, it falls 47% from its sales mark last week (91,000 sold), tumbling from the top spot to No. 3.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: I bet you didn’t know that the post-grunge outfit Trapt was around and still making records. But it is: Only Through The Pain (eesh, that title) debuted at No. 18, selling 25,000 copies. Hey, it’s better than Katy Perry, right?

This week’s top 20, with sales figures in parentheses: 1. Mamma Mia! soundtrack (131,000) 2. Miley Cyrus, Breakout (102,000) 3. Sugarland, Love On The Inside (91,000) 4. Kid Rock, Rock N Roll Jesus (90,000) 5. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (67,000) 6. Coldplay, Viva La Vida (55,000) 7. Lloyd, Lessons In Love (51,000) 8. Camp Rock soundtrack (47,000) 9. Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad (44,000) 10. Heidi Newfield, What Am I Waiting For (34,000) 11. Jonas Brothers (32,000) 12. Keith Anderson, C’mon! (32,000) 13. Now 28 (30,000) 14. Kidz Bop 14 (30,000) 15. Conor Oberst (29,000) 16. Taylor Swift (28,000) 17. Nas (25,000) 18. Trapt, Only Through The Pain (25,000) 19. Third Day, Revelation (24,000) 20. Katy Perry, One Of The Boys (23,000)

The top 10 digital albums, with sales totals in parentheses: 1. Mamma Mia! soundtrack (15,000) 2. Coldplay, Viva La Vida (13,000) 3. Conor Oberst (9,900) 4. Various Artists, Songs For Tibet (7,300) 5. M.I.A., Kala (7,200) 6. Miley Cyrus, Breakout (6,500) 7. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (5,900) 8. Sugarland, Love On The Inside (5,600) 9. Trapt, Only Through The Pain (5,200) 10. Randy Newman, Harps & Angels (5,100)

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