Lady Gaga Stays Atop Album Chart Despite Huge Sales Slide

After a massive debut last week for Lady Gaga’sBorn This Way, which found the album crashing into the #1 position on the Billboard Top 200 with just over 1.1. million copies sold, Mother Monster now proves the old adage of “what goes up must come down.” Born This Way moved another 174,000 in its second week of availability, enough to maintain the #1 position on the chart. But, overall, it’s an 84% plunge in sales. (Where’s a good old-fashioned 99-cent sale at Amazon when you need one?) Lying in the Top 200 runner-up spot is Adele’s 21, which previously spent nine weeks at #1. The UK singer’s sophomore LP racked up another 121,000 copies in sales, despite Adele canceling the remainder of her North American tour late last week due to a bout of laryngitis. 21 has now sold just over 2 million copies — the only album to do so in 2011 so far.

Four new debuts come to the Top 10 in the forms of Death Cab For Cutie’s seventh LP Codes And Keys (#3, 102,000), Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder’s solo offering Ukelele Songs (#4, 71,000), Kentucky rock band My Morning Jacket’s Circuital (#5, 55,000) and punk act Flogging Molly’s fifth album Speed Of Darkness (#9, 25,000).

Do you think Gaga can sustain a third week at #1, or will Adele once again take her place at the top of the chart?

The Top 10 of Billboard’s Top 200 chart:

1. Lady Gaga, Born This Way*2 weeks* 2. Adele, 21 3. Death Cab For Cutie, Codes And Keys*new* 4. Eddie Vedder, Ukelele Songs *new* 5. My Morning Jacket, Circuital *new* 6. Brad Paisley, This Is Country Music 7. Various, NOW 38 8. Jason Aldean, My Kinda Party 9. Flogging Molly, Speed Of Darkness *new* 10. Glee Cast, Glee: The Music, Vol. 6