It’s the same old song: Flashy news in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 while album sales continue to sag, a pattern that even a career-best opener by Christina Aguilera cannot bend.
Fact is, with her new Nielsen SoundScan mark and six new titles entering the chart’s first eight slots, the top 10 looks pretty healthy.
Aguilera’s “Back to Basics” racks up 342,000 sales in its opening frame, beating her previous best start by 4.5 percent, set when last album “Stripped” bowed at No. 2 with 330,000 copies in 2002.
“Basics” is followed by new sets from R&B sophomore Lyfe Jennings (136,000), country stalwart Trace Adkins (115,000), new R&B ensemble Cherish (91,000) and the soundtrack to “The Cheetah Girls 2” (87,000), marking only the third time in the 50-year history of Billboard’s album chart that five new entries occupy the first five slots.
Commerce from those five and the return of rapper Obie Trice (No. 8, 74,000) help deliver more volume in the top 10 than the chart saw in the same week last year, up by 6 percent. But none of that prevents an overall decline, with total albums missing the comparable 2005 frame by 6.7 percent. That deficit includes a 4.1 percent slip by catalog albums.
Mulling these numbers helps explain the odd juncture that finds the august Tower Records chain filing for bankruptcy just two weeks after winning its third straight Merchandiser of the Year award at the recent National Association of Recording Merchandisers convention.
And, while intense price competition from mass merchants and electronics chains has helped complicate life for Tower and other traditional music stores, it doesn’t even look like the lowballers are having fun.
Year to date, mass merchants’ album sales stand at 133.5 million units, down about 3 percent from the same point last year.
THRICE, TWICE, TRICE
While there have been only three occasions in Billboard 200 history that all five top slots belonged to new titles, two of them occurred this year.
The more recent fiver came in May, when Godsmack’s “IV” led the list, followed at Nos. 2-5 by Taking Back Sunday, Bruce Springsteen, Avant and Rihanna. The top 10 included another bow: Goo Goo Dolls, at No. 9.
Obie Trice might say it’s “deja vu all over again” because his first album was included in the straight the first time five new albums led the list. That week in October 2003 went one better, in fact, with chart debuts on each of the top six rungs.
OutKast, which might lead next week’s chart, was that week’s champ. Its “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” was followed at Nos. 2-6 by new sets from Dave Matthews, Limp Bizkit, R. Kelly, Trice and Nickelback. A seventh bow, by Murphy Lee, also stood in the top 10 (No. 8).
SNAPSHOT
Say Anything re-enters at No. 36 on Top Heatseekers with a 52 percent increase and its best sales week since March. That month was also the last time that ” … Is a Real Boy” appeared on the chart.
Target Stores added the album. Consequently, mass merchants, which only accounted for 2 percent of last week’s sales, own 38 percent of the album’s action this week.
The band’s single “Alive With the Glory of Love” debuts on Modern Rock at No. 38. Boston and Providence, R.I., are two markets where airplay is driving sales. The group also got a glowing mention in an Entertainment Weekly review of a Dashboard Confessional concert.
Reuters/Billboard