Another Week, More Distressing Sales News

Dan Gibson | January 30, 2009 11:30 am

Not surprisingly, Bruce Springsteen‘s Working On A Dream is projected to take the top spot on next week’s album charts away from Taylor Swift, who gripped on to No. 1 for five post-Christmas weeks (Taylor will hold on to No. 2, probably, don’t worry). Bruce’s 250,000-album sales tally isn’t too surprising, but the numbers that HITS is foreseeing for the bottom of the top 10 are more than slightly distressing. You can chalk it up to the weather, the power outages, or just general malaise surrounding the impending apocalypse, but making the top 10 on next week’s chart will likely only take 25,000 sales—possibly the lowest total ever for the No. 10 slot, with either Keyshia Cole or a compilation of WWE entrance themes barely sliding past that threshold by Sunday. Maybe that’s not a big deal, but consider this: If Merriweather Post Pavilion had been released just one week later, we would have been subjected to wall-to-wall blog raves over how Animal Collective landing in the top ten meant that a bold new direction for popular music was nigh. Instead, we just have the end of recorded music as we know it to worry about. No big deal. [HITS]