In a lackluster week for album sales–that thud you heard was album-sales tallies dropping by 55%–former B2K heartthrob Omarion came away with the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 after moving 119,000 copies of his second solo album, 21.
Biggest Debuts: The only other album to debut in top 50 this week was Switchfoot’s Oh! Gravity, which sold 63,000 copies and entered the chart at No. 18.
Biggest Slides: Both the Hannah Montana soundtrack and NOW 23, which had a stranglehold on the upper reaches of the chart during the run-up to Christmas, took hits, with Hannah sliding to the No. 10 spot because of a 77% drop (78,000 copies) and NOW falling to No. 6 after a 71.5% tumble (89,000). Meanwhile, Akon’s Konvicted nabbed the No. 2 slot on the chart despite a sales decline of 50% (112,000 copies).
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Jared Leto’s rock and roll vehicle, 30 Seconds To Mars, re-entered the top 40 with their album, A Beautiful Lie, even though overall sales of the record were down. Really, we’re just putting 30 Seconds To Mars here because Leto hasn’t gone on an anti-blog tirade lately, and he’s due for one soon, no?
Omarion Leads Post-Christmas Album Chart [Billboard]
“Jared Leto’s rock and roll vehicle” makes me think of some Knight Rideresque scenario in which Kit is played by the voice of Lou Perlman, and is actually the svengali behind 30 Seconds to Mars. “Yes, my lovely, yes…A bit more pancake makeup, yes, and then shred the ends of your sleeves for no reason. Perrrrrrfect.”
Omarion’s last album was just called O. Looks like his career plan is to add one character to each successive disc title. I eagerly await Omarion’s followups, Fob and Cock.
Over on the singles list, Beyoncé held back Fergie (thank Jeebus), despite a surge by the latter thanks to a massive surge in iTunes sales (just shy of 300,000 downloads in a week – eek!). It seems Her Incontinence was the big beneficiary of all those kids with shiny new Pods and iTunes gift cards. I suppose the bright side to this is, that’s thousands fewer kids buying her album.