Idolator

As loathe as we are to believe anything we read in Page Six (who, by the way, forced the Boss to go online and deny his pun-providing rumors of infidelity), we can't ignore their claim that Paris Hilton's long-delayed Paris—the Chinese Democracy for people who don't know how to locate China—scanned somewhere around 75,000 copies in its first week. Considering that Hilton's public-exposure level is just below that of Hassan Nasrallah's, this is a total disaster, right?

Not exactly. While we won't have confirmed numbers until later in the afternoon, the fact that Hilton came even close to the 75,000 mark is pretty astounding. Sure, industry watchdogs will point out that just about anyone can make it to the Top 10 with an ample marketing budgeting these days, and that next week's sales will probably experience an unholy drop-off, and that these are the sort of high-cost, low-payoff projects that are killing the majors. But look at it this way: A woman whose only prior music experience was dating a second-tier Backstreet Boy—and whose curiosity-object album could easily have been downloaded for free—still sold more copies in its first week than the last Slayer and Obie Trice efforts, and came close to beating Johnny Cash's American V debut. The lesson here: If you really want to get people out to the stores, make sure you get them a TV gig in which they can give handjobs to farm animals.

"Hilton's CD Is Instant Tanker" [Page Six]