Idolator
Welcome To The Dollhouse by Danity Kane, the Diddy proteges who have had their recent travails chronicled on the latest installment of Making Da Band, debuted at No. 1 on the album chart this week, selling 236,000 copies and crushing its closest competitor, Now 27. (The compilation of last season's hits moved 170,000 copies.) The comic character-named dancepop group led an unusually strong chart week that was buoyed by a few other sorta-big debuts and a surge in kiddie-centric music occasioned by the rush to fill Easter baskets.
Biggest Debuts: Flo Rida's Mail On Sunday sold 86,000 copies, entering at No. 4. To compare, Flo has three singles (!) in the top 25 right now: "Low" (No. 11, 82,000 units); "Elevator" (No. 13, 69,000 units); and "Roll" (No. 21, 38,000 units). Maybe his next "album" should just be a series of digital singles? Or, hell, ringles? (Whatever happened to those, anyway?)
Meanwhile, Gnarls Barkley's rush-released The Odd Couple came in at No. 18 with 31,000 units sold—26,000 of which were from digital outlets. That's a bit shy of my chart prediction from last week, although the Easter traffic this week did raise the bar for top-15 placement. (Last week, a sales total of 31,000 would have landed The Odd Couple at No. 14, right behind the damn Alvin soundtrack.)
Notable Jumps: I wasn't kidding about the Easter-basket rush. Look at these gains for tween-targeted albums: Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus was up 137%; Jonas Brothers saw a 107% gain; the latest Kidz Bop collection was up 104%; and a Radio Disney compilation was up 113%. All of those albums were in the top 20 this week, with the Radio Disney collection leaping 28 chart spots.
Dropping Off: Meanwhile, albums that had "Parental Advisory" stickers on them didn't fare so well. Last week's No. 1, Rick Ross' Trilla, was down 50% (No. 3, 90,000); Snoop Dogg's Ego Tripping dropped 58% (No. 7, 57,000). And Fat Joe's Elephant In The Room nosedived from No. 6 to No. 56, losing 67% of its sales from the previous week (15,000).
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: The Alvin & The Chipmunks soundtrack was up 83% (No. 11, 48,000 copies sold), showing that American parents aren't afraid of gifting their children with material related to a movie where a main character eats its own crap as a way of celebrating the holiest holiday on the Christian calendar. God bless the USA, indeed.
The top 20, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Danity Kane, Welcome To The Dollhouse (236,000)
2. Now 27 (170,000)
3. Rick Ross, Trilla (90,000)
4. Flo Rida, Mail On Sunday (86,000)
5. Jack Johnson, Sleep Through The Static (67,000)
6. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (61,000)
7. Snoop Dogg, Ego Trippin' (57,000)
8. Taylor Swift (57,000)
9. Sara Bareilles, Little Voice (55,000)
10. Hannah Montana/Miley Ray Cyrus, Best Of Both Worlds Concert (51,000)
11. Alvin & The Chipmunks soundtrack (48,000)
12. Jonas Brothers (47,000)
13. Alicia Keys, As I Am (41,000)
14. Alan Jackson, Good Time (40,000)
15. Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride (37,000)
16. Kidz Bop 13 (36,000)
17. Janet Jackson, Discipline (34,000)
18. Gnarls Barkley, The Odd Couple (31,000)
19. Colbie Caillat, Coco (30,000)
20. Radio Disney Vol. 10—Kids Jams (30,000)
Comments
I love that song where that one girl in Danity Kane goes missing and everyone blames the ugly one because they all hate her. Good song!
Pedantry note: Danity Kane were assumbled on Making The Band 3, but the latest installment is Making The Band 4, which centers on the boy band Day26, who released their debut this week. I know all of this, and yet I have no clue how Danity Kane now have two #1 albums to their stupid fucking name.
Interesting numbers, and interesting results this week.
Also, where is Amy Winehouse? She's been hanging around the top 20 since her big nite 6 weeks ago. One of the reasons I ask is, I was watching CNN last nite before Idol, and I saw something I haven't seen in a while -- a teevee commercial for a CD -- that CD being Back To Black. UMG is still pushing that CD a year after its release, and the CNN crowd is probably the right target demo.
@Al Shipley: I thought Danity Kane was also on this installment?
@Rob Murphy: Amy was at No. 24, with 26,000 units sold. I saw that ad too (it was all over Top Chef last week).
@Maura Johnston: From the MTV page: "Yup, the Making the Band 4 guys are reuniting with Diddy and moving back into the penthouse. But there's a twist ... platinum-selling all-female pop group Danity Kane, winners of Making the Band 3, are joining the guys in the house while working on their new album! And Diddy wants to see who will finish first."
[www.mtv.com]
I knew I wasn't hallucinating them being on those ads during TRL.
Yeah, I guess they're still on the show? I haven't watched since the trainwreck that was MTB2. You just phrased it in a way that I thought made it sound like they're the most recent band assembled on the show.
At least the Danity girls are generating interest amongst the youngsters to actually purchase albums....that's a pretty healthy number for an MTV group.
I know we all laugh at Janet, Mimi, and Madonna all gearing their material towards the MTV crowd, but this week's chart proves that there is still a buying power in that market that cannot be denied.
Though I will admit that I am utterly terrified of the release of a music video in which M provocatively wraps her old bones around Timberlake in the hopes that his relevance will just ooze out of his pores and stick to her skin (at least for the next 6 months).
Every good Catholic knows that Easter pwns Christmas in terms of actual "holiness." Christmas just has a better PR campaign. If only Bing Crosby had sung something as memorable for Easter...
@Rob Murphy: Yeah, the push continues, and (I can't believe I'm about to type this) good on Universal for keeping it up. That's an album that deserves the year-long promotion.
At the gym yesterday I was watching VH1 with the sound off, and I saw "You Know I'm No Good" in their Top 20 Video Countdown. Since everyone knows that countdown is bought-and-sold by the labels, I actually took that as a good sign that U thinks they can still make that song a hit (at least an A/C hit).
@Chris Molanphy: Shh, don't tell the webmasters at Mariah Daily and Janet-Xone that the VH1 countdown is rigged!
@Al Shipley: I'm not sure how their first album did so well (since it's SHIT) but their sophomore effort is surprisingly great.
And I'm not really sure how Diddy has come up his stupid season-naming system. There was "The Band" from MTB2, then Danity Kane for MTB3.1 & 3.2, then Day26 in MTB4.1, then DK and Day26 and Donnie in MTB4.2 and apparently MTB4.3 will be all three groups on tour...!
I'm only slightly embarrassed to say that I'm curious about Donnie's album. Mostly because Seven may be the best thing I've seen on TV since Arrested Development went off the air.
@Chris Molanphy: FWIW, about 2 years ago VH1 changed their countdown show from a purposefully vague (i.e. rigged) charting system to basing it purely on website votes. Granted, I'm sure that's easily manipulated, but I think it's more based on popular opinion than record label priorities, or at least moreso than it used to be. Host is still awful, though.
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