The results of this week's round of album sales are trickling in, and it looks like Neil Diamond will take the top spot, selling in the neighborhood of 125,000 copies. Diamond's previous album,
12 Songs, debuted at No. 4, which may be a sign that Matt Sweeney's acclaimed guitar work on
Home Before Dark is responsible for its success. Projections have all non-Neil Diamond albums selling below the six figure benchmark; Clay Aiken slides into second place with less than half of the first-week sales of 2006's
A Thousand Different Ways. What happened, Claymates? You've let your red-haired angel down. Madonna and Mariah Carey hang on desperately to the three and four spots, while Gavin DeGraw, Toby Keith, Leona Lewis, Josh Groban, Dierks Bentley, and Michael Buble round out the most depressing top ten in recent memory. [
HITS]
Idolator
A few more spoilers have started to trickle out about tonight's American Idol pre-finale, including word that David Archuleta will reprise "Imagine" and David Cook is planning on singing U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"—the first time a U2 song has been cleared for an Idol performance. (Perhaps this means that Bono is the big star Nigel Lythgoe was crowing about yesterday?) Also: Unlike last year, when Blake Lewis was forced to gut out "This Is My Now," the two Davids have been given leeway to pick their own coronation songs from the songwriting contest's top ten vote-getters. Their rumored picks, and other news bits, after the jump.
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Is anyone going to Neil Diamond's MySpace show in New York City tonight? I'm debating whether or not it'd be worth even trying to get in line once I'm off the blogging clock, and trying to figure out how the demographics of Neil's audience square with the MySpace demo. (The poster's really pretty. Click to enlarge it.) At least I'll get Home Before Dark, right? Wocka wocka! [
