Bruce Springsteen’s Magic sold 335,000 copies last week, a total that put the New Jersey singer at No. 1 on the just-released SoundScan charts. The album is Springsteen’s eighth career chart-topper, although the first-week total is substantially less than the 525,000 mark set by The Rising back in 2002.
Biggest Debuts: Like last week, this week’s chart was full of first-time entries: Matchbox Twenty’s super-defensively titled Exile On Mainstream entered the chart at No. 3, and Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em’s advertorially titled souljaboytellem.com came in right behind it. Meanwhile, Annie Lennox’s unfortunately named Songs Of Mass Destruction debuted at No. 9. Trey Songz, Faith Hill, Brooks & Dunn, John Fogerty, and Dashboard Confessional all had top-20 debuts. And from the “what the hell” files, PJ Harvey’s gorgeous, arresting White Chalk only sold 13,000 copies and entered the chart at No. 63? That’s even fewer sales than the cash-in Dylan compilation. I am so ashamed of everyone.
Notable Jumps: There weren’t many spikes on this week’s chart (album sales overall were down 2% from last week). But the first Hannah Montana soundtrack did see a 4% uptick in sales, no doubt the result of parents trying to placate their kids after their utter failure to get tickets to this winter’s Miley Cyrus concerts.
Dropping Off: Last week’s No. 1, Rascal Flatts’ Still Feels Good, took a 69% sales hit and fell to No. 2. Keyshia Cole was down 67% from last week, when she debuted at No. 2, and dropped to No. 6; other top-10 debuts from last week like the Foo Fighters and Jill Scott also saw their sales drop by two-thirds. And Feist’s The Reminder saw its iPod-assisted chart ascent end, as it took a 30% sales hit and fell (gracefully and tastefully) from No. 28 to No. 39.
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: We’re at the point right now where the charts, for the most part, are pretty explicable: Big debuts and certain stalwarts holding steady around the top 20. But I will say that last week, I didn’t expect the Matchbox Twenty greatest-hits collection to outsell the vision-obstructed Soulja Boy, whose single outsold his album by approximately 58,000 copies this week. (The new Matchbox Twenty song, by contrast, sold about 79,000 copies.)
The top 20, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Bruce Springsteen, Magic (335,000)
2. Rascal Flatts, Still Feels Good (167,900)
3. Matchbox Twenty, Exile On Mainstream (131,000)
4. Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, souljaboytellem.com (117,000)
5. J. Holiday, Back Of My Lac’ (105,000)
6. Keyshia Cole, Just Like You (94,000)
7. Kanye West, Graduation (92,000)
8. Reba McEntire, Reba Duets (80,000)
9. Annie Lennox, Songs Of Mass Destruction (78,000)
10. High School Musical 2 soundtrack (77,000)
11. Trey Songz, Trey Day (73,000)
12. Faith Hill, Hits (69,000)
13. Brooks & Dunn, Cowboy Town (69,000)
14. John Fogerty, Revival (65,000)
15. Jill Scott, The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3 (55,000)
16. Foo Fighters, Echoes Silence Patience And Grace (55,000)
17. 50 Cent, Curtis (51,000)
18. Dashboard Confessional, The Shade Of Poison Trees (48,000)
19. Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates (44,000)
20. Jagged Edge, Baby Makin’ Project (35,000)
Music industry to Bruce: Radio? Nowhere!
Clearly, Volvo-driving MB20 fans are still bigger CD-buyers than Soulja Boy fans. I mean, once you’ve watched the “Crank That” video 500 times and uploaded your own dance video, downloaded the iTunes single and pimped the ringtone, who has the time or money left to buy a CD?
I was hoping Kanye would hang above the 100K line this week so I could nominate him for the NAFID, and we could debate whether his impressive 4-week total of nearly 1.5M scans was explicable or not. And also — please note that Kanye is still outselling 50 nearly 2-1.
Nice job, ‘Ye.
So… no one’s surprised at a top 10 debut by Annie Lennox?