Idolator
Hannah Montana 2—the double-album T.I. Vs. T.I.P. of the Disney Channel set—came out of last week's Billboard 200 battle on top, with the two-persona-album (one half has songs sung by Hannah, the other by Hannah portrayer Miley Cyrus) selling 326,000 units and beating Kelly Clarkson's My December for the chart crown. (Perhaps Clarkson can now commisserate with My Chemical Romance, who suffered a similar fate last fall.)
Biggest Debuts: Clarkson debuted at No. 2; My December sold 291,000 copies, which actually bested her first-week total for Breakaway (250,000 units) but which will still be spun as a flop, probably. At No. 7 was Ryan Adams, whose Easy Tiger sold 61,000 copies; farther down, the Beastie Boys' all-instrumental The Mix-Up came in at No. 15 and sold 44,000 copies.
Charting The Decline: Album sales were down a tick from last week—0.84%, or 70,000 units—but were down 8% from a year ago this week, when units shifted totaled 9.59 million units and India.Arie's Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship sold 161,000 copies.
Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Fergie continued her eyebrow-shaped ascent on the charts, moving from No. 15 to No. 12 with The Dutchess. She's even outselling Rihanna! Won't someone do something?
Cyrus Sidesteps Clarkson To Debut At No. 1 [Billboard]
Comments
Once again, my dream of living in a country where the Bad Brains debut at number one is crushed.
To answer a question posed here the other day, SoundScan tallies are for number of "scans," i.e., actual sales, not number of sales times number of discs. In other words, Miley/Hannah actually sold 326K double-CDs, not 163K sales that were multiplied by two because it's a two-disc set. Which makes M.C. vs. H.M.'s sales achievement fairly impressive.
It's only the RIAA that cheats by counting number of discs when handing out gold and platinum awards. So this product is gold already (250K of a double disc = 500K of a single disc by their blinkered math), and when its sales reach 500K it'll go platinum.
Actually, it wouldn't be very hard to argue that "My December" should be doing much better, since, as others have said at various times, an album's first-week sales are often a referendum on the previous album. By that criterion, Clive "Beelzeboss" Davis could easily say that given the monster success of "Breakaway," this album should have sold 350K+ (and he wouldn't be entirely wrong).
She's even outselling Rihanna!
Good god.
About Hannah Montana:
She must be stopped.
She. Must. Be. Stopped!
@blobby: I'm the one who brought that up recently, and yeah - much as I want to defend Clarkson's rights as an artist and shit, I gotta concede, you're right.
Aww, thanks-- now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Wow, swipes at both Fergie and Rihanna? Are you trying to bait me? [JK!]
Seriously, I'm not surprised Fergie is still pulling new hits from The Dutchess [yes, I know how much you hate "Big Girls Don't Cry", but it is, alas, a hit], but I'm rather surprised that so many people who would be interested in buying the CD still don't have it.
Clarkson does top this week's list of "people whose music I've actually heard," in which Adams comes in a distant second for that one song from Gold in 2001, Bad Brains comes in third, and everyone else is interchangable.
Except that whenever I see the word "Fergie" I think of the divorced diet-program Duchess. That's not the right Fergie, I hope.
Kelly Clarkson actually did top Billboard's Top Digital Downloads Album Chart and is #2 in the UK Top Albums Chart. You have to admit, whether you like her new material or not, she has loyal fans that will embrace her "new" sound. It's unfortunate that all this upheaval is overshadowing her amazing talent. If you hear her live or watch youtube vids of her on American Idol, she can fucking sing.
Believe me I'm not a Clarkson die-hard but I give her mad props for sticking to her guns. I'll even be bold enough to say that My December will receive more award nominations than Breakaway once everything is said and done.
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