Idolator
Because that's when his holiday album Noel's ride on the top of the charts will end. But he shouldn't feel too bad: It sold 669,000 (!) copies last week, raising its year-to-date sales total to 2.77 million and giving him the prize of the highest-selling album of 2007. The High School Musical 2 soundtrack is second—and only 70,000 albums behind—so the last week of the year, which will probably be light on the Christmas-album-buying tip, will likely be crucial as far as how this battle plays out. Look, it's actually something exciting on the pop charts! Who'd have thought!
Biggest Debuts: Bow Wow and Omarion's Face/Off—currently "losing" to Hell Rell in their Worst Album Cover Of The Year match—bowed (ha ha GET IT?) at No. 11, selling 107,000 copies. Birdman's 5*Stunna entered at No. 18 and sold 86,000 copies; Mario's Go came in at No. 21, moving 77,000 copies; and the Wu-Tang Clan's 8 Diagrams entered at No. 25, selling 68,000 copies; and The-Dream's Love/Hate came in at No. 30, selling 59,000 copies.
Notable Jumps: Mannheim Steamroller now has a top five album, everyone. Why? Because sales of Christmas Song jumped 98% from last week; the album sold 180,000 copies. One hundred and eighty thousand copies! Do they have golden tickets inside? Do they come with free foot rubs?
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: In addition to the Steamroller madness, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is No. 1 on the Top Pop Catalog chart. Anyone else afraid that this means that even more all-Christmas radio-format flips are in the offing for 2008?
This week's top 20:
1. Josh Groban, Noel
2. Alicia Keys, As I Am
3. Eagles, Long Road Out Of Eden
4. Now 26
5. Mannheim Steamroller, Christmas Song
6. High School Musical 2 soundtrack
7. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus
8. Taylor Swift
9. Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride
10. Garth Brooks, Ultimate Hits
11. Bow Wow & Omarion, Face/Off
12. Chris Brown, Exclusive
13. Rascal Flatts, Still Feels Good
14. Led Zeppelin, Mothership
15. Celine Dion, Taking Chances
16. Jonas Brothers
17. Colbie Caillat, Coco
18. Birdman, 5*Stunna
19. Andrea Bocelli, The Best Of Andrea Bocelli: Vivere
20. Sugarland, Enjoy The Ride
Comments
Has that ever happened before? A holiday album being the highest selling record of the year?
Can this be the death knell for even looking at sales charts anymore?
Can I write a comment that consists entirely of questions?
@Camp Tiger Claw: Tune in tomorrow! Same Bat-time! Same Bat-channel!
@Camp Tiger Claw: Well, you could probably make the case that it sort of happened on this year's Billboard charts, what with all the albums that were given as presents during last year's holiday season making such strong showings.
Idolator's campaign to take the Jonas Brothers to the Top (20, at least) of the Pops seems to be working!
@Camp Tiger Claw:
Has that ever happened before? A holiday album being the highest selling record of the year?
I'm not one of Idolator's chart gurus and I don't have extensive Billboard stat access, but I think it's only happened for a single, not an album: Bing Crosby's recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," the top seller of 1942. Jody Rosen's fascinating book about the song includes an amusing anecdote on journalistic industry predictions:
"Time magazine proclaimed the song the biggest smash of Berlin's 'hit-studded' career and speculated that its success alone might reverse the fortunes of the slumping sheet-music industry."
@Camp Tiger Claw: I think it's fair to say what Groban's pulling off here is essentially unprecedented.
The last holiday album to even top the charts was Kenny G's 1994 Miracles: The Holiday Album, which sold 3 million copies by the end of that year's holiday season. (It has since been certified octuple-platinum.) That's comparable to the numbers Groban's rolling this year (although by next week Groban will probably have cleared 3 mil), but as to your question, the Kenny G record fell way short of the top-sellers of either 1994 (Ace of Base's The Sign, 7 million by year-end '94) or 1995 (Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View, about 10 million during calendar '95).
In general, it's common for Christmas albums to sell well over time but rare for them to explode in a single holiday season. That's why No. 1 Christmas albums are so rare.
(Thanks to lastclearchance for the useful item about "White Christmas." Until Elton John's Diana-porn tribute record in '97, "White Christmas" was the biggest-selling single of all time.)
I'm surprised no one's mentioning here how anemic that Wu-Tang number is. Even accounting for the New Reality in the industry, that's literally around one-tenth the first-week number of Wu -Tang Forever a decade ago and probably one-fifth that of The W.
I half-wonder if, in the clannish world of hip-hop, all the badmouthing of the record by Ghostface et al. flagged longtime Wu-heads to give the record a skip.
@dennisobell: Well, it did almost twice the numbers of Ghost's record last week. Is it just that the Wu-Tang brand has lost its luster? What kind of numbers did Iron Flag do in its first week?
@dennisobell: It's really too bad that the numbers are so low for both Ghostface and Wu-Tang, since both albums have steadily been growing on me over the past several days.
As for Josh Groban's sales numbers, do they mean that we should just swear in Obama as President now? After all, Obama's been getting the same push from Oprah as Groban...
@Thierry: Also, why does Oprah hate music?
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