Toby Keith’s Big Dog Daddy and its back-of-the-book Ford ad (not to mention the actually not-that-bad, if chorusless, song “High Maintenance Woman”) topped this week’s Billboard 200, selling 204,000 copies. The album is Keith’s third No. 1 album on the chart; the total is way off from the first-week sales of his previous album, White Trash With Money, which debuted at No. 2 in April 2006 after shifting 330,000 units.
If you thought that T-Pain’s Epiphany would win the chart battle this week, you should buy … oh, you know. The Floridian singer’s second album moved 171,000 copies last week, so expect to hear his ubiquitous single coming out of even more car windows over the next few days.
R. Kelly’s Double Up sold 386,000 copies last week, beating our readers’ predictions and landing at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in a somewhat sleepy week, as far as debut action goes.
Smooth-rock revivalists Maroon 5 started making returns on Universal’s investment last week, and their new album It Won’t Be Soon Before Long debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 429,000 copies. Included in that total are 102,000 copies of the album sold through digital distribution channels (the album’s still No. 1 on the iTunes Store), a tally that raised the single-week digital sales bar set by Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight last week.
Linkin Park’s Minutes To Midnight sold 623,000 copies this week, breaking the record for the highest first-week total of 2007 and entering the Billboard chart at No. 1. The album also moved 84,000 digital copies; that total set a record for the highest single-week digital albums tally, according to Billboard.biz. (See? Linkin Park fans aren’t just harassing Chester Bennington online!)
Canadian smoothie Michael Bublé fell into the No. 1 slot on this week’s Billboard 200; sales of his new album, Call Me Irresponsible, actually fell 32%, but the 145,000-unit sales total he amassed last week was enough to give him the top spot on the album charts.
Because Of You, the second album by R & B singer-songwriter Ne-Yo, sold 251,000 copies to debut at No. 1 on this week’s Billboard 200. Because is Ne-Yo’s second chart-topping album in a little more than a year; In My Own Words, his first album, entered the chart at its peak in February 2006. At No. 2 was Canadian crooner Michael Bublé, whose Call Me Irresponsible moved 199,000 units in its first week on store shelves.
Avril Lavigne remained the mother… princess of the Billboard 200 for the second straight week, as her smack-you-in-the-face extravaganza The Best Damn Thing moved 122,000 copies. That total was enough to stay on top, although it did represent a 58% nosedive from her first-week sales. (No word on the ratio of clean versions scanned to dirty versions sold.)
There is a large market out there that wants–nay, craves–to have hour-long experiences in which they are yelled at by women with multi-hued hair. For those who don’t have the funds, or the inkling, to visit the less-than-reputable ladies who advertise in the local alt-weeklies, there’s Avril Lavigne’s The Best Damn Thing, which sold 286,000 copies last week to land at the No. 1 slot on the Billboard 200.
In a Billboard 200 week that probably made many a record executive slap a forehead (either belonging to them or a nearby assistant), this week’s total album sales saw a 23% decline from last week’s tally, and the No. 1 album, Now 24, sold a mere 89,000 copies–a 58% dip from last week’s total, but enough to hold on to the top slot.
