Avril Lavigne Holds On To Her Crown

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.)

Biggest Debuts: Joe’s Ain’t Nothing Like Me sold 98,000 copies, coming in at No. 2 for the week; Arctic Monkeys’ Favourite Worst Nightmare moved 44,000 units, entering the chart at No. 7. (That was close to most of our readers’ expectations.) And in the what-year-is-this? department, both Neil Sedaka and Donny Osmond had top-30 debuts.

Biggest Slides: Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero sold 58,000 copies–a 69% sales decrease that only dropped the album down to No. 3.

Charting The Decline: Album sales (7.69 million units) were off by nearly 20% from this week last year (9.51 million units). That week, the top five slots were taken up with debuts and led by the 211,000-copy selling Godsmack. (Rounding out that top five: Taking Back Sunday, Bruce Springsteen, Avant and Rihanna.) And consider this stat: In 2003, Joe’s album And Then… opened with 126,000 units sold. Where did that land him on the charts? No. 26.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: We’ll give this to the band that inspired this category’s name, as All The Right Reasons snuck back into the top 20. This band is officially Teflon (and its “inspirational” single “If Everyone Cared,” which is currently lurking in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 20, is probably helping its tallies).

Lavigne’s Remains No. 1 As Joe Debuts High [Billboard]