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As expected by, well, pretty much everyone, the soundtrack to High School Musical 2 topped this week’s album charts, with 615,000 people ponying up to hear the latest songs by Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, and company. HSM2 was one of four Radio Disney-friendly albums in the top 20; Hannah Montana 2 was No. 2, the Jonas’ Brothers self-titled album on Hollywood slipped to No. 8, and the original High School Musical Soundtrack vaulted all the way up from No. 28 to No. 16. The only catch about HSM2’s debut? Its first-week total was about 8,000 shy of Linkin Park’s first-week total for Minutes to Midnight. (Guess some of those kids grew up.)
Biggest Debuts: Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds’ Live at Radio City Music Hall entered at No. 3, selling 70,000 copies; Blaqk Audio’s Cexcells came in at No. 18, selling 29,000 copies.
Notable Jumps: Paramore’s Riot!, no doubt the beneficiary of the band being played during every interstitial break on MTV and MTV2, leapt from No. 43 to No. 15, selling 33,000 copies.
Dropping Off: Last week’s No. 1, UGK’s Underground Kingz, fell from the top spot to No. 6 (-62%); Plies’ The Real Testament, which was last week’s No. 2, dropped to No. 9 (-60%).
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Can the 83% sales jump of the remastered soundtrack to Viva Las Vegas be attributed in any way to those Viagra ads that rework the song into “Viva Viagra”? Please say no.
The top 20, with estimated sales totals in parentheses:
1. High School Musical 2 soundtrack (615,000)
2. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (83,000)
3. Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Live at Radio City Music Hall (70,000)
4. Now 25 (66,000)
5. Hairspray soundtrack (63,000)
6. UGK, Underground Kingz (60,000)
7. Fergie, The Dutchess (53,000)
8. Jonas Brothers (41,000)
9. Plies, The Real Testament (39,000)
10. Common, Finding Forever (39,000)
11. T.I., T.I. Vs. T.I.P. (38,000)
12. Linkin Park, Minutes To Midnight (38,000)
13. Nickelback, All The Right Reasons (37,000)
14. Amy Winehouse, Back To Black (36,000)
15. Paramore, Riot! (33,000)
16. High School Musical soundtrack (30,000)
17. Taylor Swift (30,000)
18. Blaqk Audio, Cexcells (29,000)
19. Sean Kingston (29,000)
20. Kidz Bop Kidz, Kidz Bop 12 (28,000)
This is the closest we might ever get to a new DeFranco Family album. Soak it up, people.
i’m glad these records oriented to kids are selling in such large numbers.
That Blaqk Audio album is out? I’m still on the fence about buying it. Thoughts, anyone?
If Zach Braff would only pull together a RadioDisney hits comp, it would outsell all this other piddling nonsense combined. And then the Earth would plummet into the sun.
Can you remind me whether these SoundScan numbers include digital sales as well? If not, adding those in surely would push HSM2 at least close to 1 million copies.
Wow. Just wow.
@SomeSound-MostlyFury: Now THAT will change your life.
@DHMBIB: They do. HSM2’s digital sales made up about 10% of the total.
For some strange reason I scanned down to see the top 20 list just to see if Fegie’s The Dutchess was still in the top ten, and lo and behold, there it is, sitting pretty at number seven. I say shitgoddamn! 53,000 copies?@#* Really? People are still walking into record stores and going, “who sings that Glamorous song about being delicious? Ah yes! Fergie! I need to cop that!”
@Tauwan: I think it has something to do with the fact that “Big Girls Don’t Cry” is on pop radio every 10 seconds.