The Rick Rubin-produced Neil Diamond album Home Before Dark took the top spot on this week’s album chart, selling 146,000 copies and easily outpacing its competition. Home is somehow the first No. 1 album of Diamond’s career, which is probably more a testament to the wacky way the album charts were calibrated back in the day than it is to the fact that he’s been reaching out to the MySpace generation.
Madonna’s Hard Candy was last week’s top-selling album, shifting 280,000 copies in its first week of release and leaving every other commercially available offering in the dust. Candy was the only album on this week’s chart to break the six-figures-sold mark; Mariah Carey’s E=MC2, the runner-up to Hard Candy, sold 95,000 copies.
On first glance, the top four occupants of this week’s album chart–Mariah Carey’s E=MC2 (182,000 copies); Leona Lewis’ Spirit (96,000); Flight Of The Conchords (52,000); and Ashlee Simpson’s Bittersweet World (47,000)–are a testament to the importance of television in promoting albums; all four artists had their albums co-promoted on various chat and game shows last week (and, in the case of the mumble-funny Kiwis in Flight, their own HBO series). On second look, their sales totals are further evidence that the bar for a “successful” album is even lower these days, particularly if you count the sales of the No. 5 album, Atmosphere’s When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold, which sold 36,000 copies last week. When life gives you lemons, indeed.
Mariah Carey pulled in her highest sales week and the highest sales week of 2008 during the first week that E=MC2 was on shelves, but her tally didn’t break the half-million mark; the album sold 463,000 copies, outpacing the first-week sales of Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through The Static by about 90,000.
The combined power of Simon Cowell, Oprah, Clive Davis, and Leona Lewis’ pupilless look resulted in the X Factor winner’s debut album, Spirit, debuting at No. 1 on the album charts this week. It sold 205,000 copies and probably inspired a lot of “the old model still works!!” back-slapping in the halls of J Records, although I’d hold off on any self-congratulation until the week two sales come out. (If people decide to pick up Spirit when they go on their new-Mariah-album run, maybe we can call this launch a successful one. For now, color me skeptical.)
Welcome To The Dollhouse by Danity Kane, the Diddy proteges who have had their recent travails chronicled on the latest installment of Making Da Band, debuted at No. 1 on the album chart this week, selling 236,000 copies and crushing its closest competitor, Now 27. (The compilation of last season’s hits moved 170,000 copies.) The comic character-named dancepop group led an unusually strong chart week that was buoyed by a few other sorta-big debuts and a surge in kiddie-centric music occasioned by the rush to fill Easter baskets.
Rick Ross is owed an apology. His latest album, Trilla, sold 198,000 copies in its first week on shelves, and it debuted at No. 1 on this week’s SoundScan chart, beating out such comers as the always-durable Now collection and the apparently-appealing-to-bloggers-now Snoop Dogg.
Janet Jackson’s Discipline took the top spot on this week’s albums chart, selling 181,000 copies in its first week in stores. Which is a somewhat impressive number in recent-record-sales terms, but consider this: In October 2006, 20 Y.O. entered the chart at No. 2–and it sold 296,000 copies. Of course, trying to compare the recorded-music sales landscapes from then and now is like trying to compare a regular hunk of cheese to one that’s been gnawed by a thousand disease-infested rats, but it’s probably worth pointing out, given that I’ve heard “Feedback” a lot more in public than I heard that terrible song from 20 Y.O. that featured Khia and that served as the album’s lead single.
The top tier of this week’s album chart was pretty grim, thanks to a post-Grammy hangover that resulted in people promptly forgetting that they could easily buy albums by the likes of Jack Johnson (No. 1, off 42%), Alicia Keys (No. 2, off 51%) and Amy Winehouse (No. 3, off 55%). But lurking in its middle reaches was yet another testament to the power of televised music: Boyz II Men’s Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA shot up from No. 182 to No. 62 on a 157-percent sales gain, one derived in large part from the group’s appearance Thursday night on the Fox game show Don’t Forget The Lyrics, which featured them performing songs from the new album. Oh, if only music programming wasn’t such a ratings disaster, the music industry would be able to fix itself but good!
Jack Johnson topped the sales charts last week, selling 180,000 copies of Sleep Through The Static, but the rest of the top sellers had Grammys written all over them, with Herbie Hancock’s Album Of The Year winner River: The Joni Letters skyrocketing from No. 159 to No. 5 and nearly doubling its total sales in the space of seven days. (It sold 54,000 copies and has moved 114,000 to date.) People were so overtaken by Grammy fever, the dumb compilation of Grammy-nominated songs even saw a 40% sales gain!
