Idolator
Jack Johnson topped the sales charts last week, selling 180,000 copies of Sleep Through The Static, but the rest of the top sellers had Grammys written all over them, with Herbie Hancock's Album Of The Year winner River: The Joni Letters skyrocketing from No. 159 to No. 5 and nearly doubling its total sales in the space of seven days. (It sold 54,000 copies and has moved 114,000 to date.) People were so overtaken by Grammy fever, the dumb compilation of Grammy-nominated songs even saw a 40% sales gain!
Biggest Debuts: The new, self-titled, Max Martin-collaborating album by Simple Plan came in at No. 14, selling 39,000 copies; the next new entry on the chart is Wow Gospel 2008, which came in at No. 34 (28,000 sales).
Notable Jumps: All over the chart, Grammy-assisted boosts were visible, from Amy Winehouse's Back To Black (No. 2, 115,000 sales/+368%) to Alicia Keys' As I Am (No. 3, 109,000 sales/+38%) to John Legend's Live From Philadelphia (No. 12, 40,000 sales/+209%) to the Foo Fighters' Echoes Silence Patience And Grace (No. 22, 33,000 sold/+160+). Even Feist's wan performance of "1-2-3-4" helped The Reminder get a 70% sales uptick. And Celine Dion's Taking Chances experienced a CBS-aided renaissance of its own, with the singer's Friday night special no doubt adding to her 141% sales boost.
Dropping Off: While sales last week were up 16.1% from the week before, they were down 11.6% from this time last year, according to Billboard.
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: People are still buying the Alvin & The Chipmunks soundtrack, which experienced another 20% sales gain last week. We can only take comfort that the high number of Grammy-assisted chart vaults led to the album taking a backwards bullet and falling from No. 19 to No. 26.
The week's top 20, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Jack Johnson, Sleep Through The Static (180,000)
2. Amy Winehouse, Back To Black (115,000)
3. Alicia Keys, As I Am (109,000)
4. 2008 Grammy Nominees (72,000)
5. Herbie Hancock, River: The Joni Letters (54,000)
6. Juno soundtrack (53,000)
7. Taylor Swift (52,000)
8. Sheryl Crow, Detours (52,000)
9. Mary J. Blige, Growing Pains (49,000)
10. Step Up 2: The Streets soundtrack (45,000)
11. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (43,000)
12. John Legend, Live From Philadelphia (40,000)
13. Chris Brown, Exclusive (40,000)
14. Simple Plan (39,000)
15. Daughtry (38,000)
16. Eagles, Long Road Out Of Eden (38,000)
17. Lenny Kravitz, It Is Time For A Love Revolution (38,000)
18. Keyshia Cole, Just Like You (35,000)
19. Garth Brooks, Ultimate Hits (35,000)
20. k.d. lang, Watershed (35,000)
Comments
Interesting that the Foo Fighters sold more than Kanye before and after the Grammy bump, despite the fact that both have been out for just about the same amount of time (their release dates were 2 weeks apart in September). That's either more evidence that rock releases have a longer tail than hip hop, or you can just chalk it up to the fact that practically everyone who could've wanted Graduation has it already.
Um, except that Michael Jackson's Thriller 25 should really have been #2 because it sold 167,000 units this week, and yet somehow was only eligible for the 'top catalog albums' chart. F billboard.
@Al Shipley: I've heard more bitching about "that asshole Kanye West" from rank-and-file music fans in the week since the Grammys than almost anything else. (These are the sort of mortgage-having, early-middle to fully-middle-aged people I encounter IRL, not on the interwebs.)
In short, thanks to his speeches, if Kanye made any impression on the type of semi-passive music fan who only thinks to buy records after watching the Grammys, it was a bad one. I explain to these folks, Yeah, he's an egotistical twerp, but he's also three-for-three on great hip-hop albums, which is rare. I'd be a little egotistical too if my records were that good..., but they mostly scoff and shake their heads. So there's just no way a well-intentioned square (read: white, not young) person, who will try the occasional OutKast album, is going to try a Kanye record, given their not-a-nice-man impression of him every year around awards time. A shame, but true.
But Foo Fighters? That Dave Grohl...such a nice boy!
@softlord: Trust me, you want the new edition of Thriller appearing on the catalog chart. That means its sales are officially being combined with those of the original Thriller. Which means the album stands a chance at reclaiming the all-time U.S. single-album sales crown from the Eagles Their Greatest Hits -- one of the most unfortunate upsets in chart history.
@Chris Molanphy: Thanks Chris
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