When I saw the SoundScan charts this morning, I felt kind of bad for Slipknot. The masked metallers haven’t been having the best string of luck recently, and now their album All Hope Is Gone was narrowly beaten out for the top spot on the album tally by LAX, the new album from tormented name-dropper the Game. How small of a margin did they lose by, you ask? Try 13 sales. Well, apaprently I wasn’t the only one who felt bad about this: Slipknot, upon seeing this statistic, gathered up its brooding rage and did what any red-blooded American would do: They demanded a recount from the SoundScan folks. You can probably guess what happened next.
Yes, the SoundScan people found some 1,244 sales hiding within the bowels of their system, or maybe at a neglected Hot Topic somewhere in the ‘burbs, and that was enough to give Slipknot the one-week win over the Game. All Hope Is Gone‘s final sales total is 239,516 to LAX‘s un-revised 238,382; whether or not the Game is going to further appeal his own SoundScan total is unknown at this point, but surely he’s at least comforted by the fact that his first-week sales beat out those achieved by his former cronies in G-Unit earlier this summer.
Slipknot Edges The Game Atop Billboard 200 [Billboard]
How’s new music these days? Lax. Is it going to turn around? All Hope Is Gone. What could possibly save it? Rock’n'Roll Jesus. How long will the industry last without one? A Little Bit Longer. Then what happens? Mamma Mia!
Thank you, thank you.
It’s a good thing that the Game’s not obsessed with his Sound Scan numbers.
Oh, wait…
This can only be settled one way: a Madden ’09 tournament.
1,244 sales? That’s only one for each of the band members’ parents.
This isn’t the first reversal at No. 1 ever — the week after 9/11, Sony got Billboard to fix an error and declare System of a Down’s Toxicity the best-seller for that week, replacing the, like, sixth week of Alicia Keys’s debut at No. 1.
What’s weird about Game getting beaten here is, Billboard adds in tallies of sales from small black retailers who don’t use SoundScan, and that usually gives the R&B/hip-hop act the edge in situations like this.
\m/ \m/
OMG, do these two acts still exist? Am I that disconnected from music? GOSH.