Chart Stalker 6/23/11: Bad Meets Evil and Tops the Charts

Eminem has returned to the top of the Billboard album charts, and he’s brought his homeboy Royce Da 5’9 along with him. Teaming up as Bad Meets Evil, the duo debuts at #1 with Hell: The Sequel. 171,000 people bought the album; not fantastic numbers for a title Eminem-affiliated, but this album comes without the pop cachet that his solo albums generally have. In other words, this is something for the hip-hop heads. So a chart-topping debut is still impressive. It comes a year to the day after Eminem himself exploded for a debut in excess of 700,000 units with Recovery, which is still hanging around at #41 and stands just about 100,000 units short of the 4 million mark-quite impressive in this day and age.

Em and Royce narrowly squeak by 11 year-old Jackie Evancho. The prodigy’s sophomore effort, Dream with Me, falls just 9,000 or so units of the chart’s top rung. . I’d expect this one to have legs, as artists who skew older (despite her age, I’d imagine many of her fans are parents and grandparents) tend to not have people rush out to buy their records in the first week.

Bad Meets Evil and Evancho kick off a lengthy list of chart debuts this week. The Top 20 also welcomes new arrivals for electro-pop act Owl City (#6), the new album by Barry Manilow (#7), a new effort from R&B vocalist Ledisi (#8), a country version of Now That’s What I Call Music (#14) and glam rock ensemble Black Veil Brides at #17.

Father’s Day figured into this tracking week, and unsurprisingly, several evergreen titles with dad appeal moved up the chart this week, goosed by deep discounting at online retailers. The most impressive moves are made by hits compilations from Frank Sinatra and Journey. The Chairman of the Board’s Nothing But the Best set sports an increase of over 600% in scans and re-enters the entire album chart at #23, while Journey fans continue to not stop believin’-their Greatest Hits album jumps from #101 to #18, with a 374% increase in sales. The very guy-friendly Foo Fighters also make some big jumps this week; their hits compilation skips from #175-#48 with an increase of 262%, while their former #1 album Wasting Light officially obtains Gold certification this week and jumps from #26 to #12, almost doubling sales from the prior week.

Album sales year to date are still up over last year, but look for that to change, as the industry runs into the weeks last year when huge albums from Eminem and Drake debuted. There’s nothing on this week’s schedule that will match those numbers, but the release of Beyonce’s 4 on June 28th could turn out to be competitive (although the muted reaction to ever song she’s released so far is not a good omen.) On next week’s chart, R&B star Jill Scott will enjoy her first ever #1 album with her fourth studio effort, The Light of the Sun.

Over on the singles side, Katy Perry just might re-write history with her new single, “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”. The song vaults to #1 on the digital download chart, displacing Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”, which falls to #5. If it moves up to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (which combines sales and airplay), it will be the fifth #1 single from Perry’s Teenage Dream album, joining “California Gurls”, the title track, “Firework” and “E.T.” The only other artist in history to score five #1s from the same album? Michael Jackson, who did it with “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”, “The Way You Make Me Feel”, “Dirty Diana”, “Man in the Mirror” and the title track from 1987’s Bad.

Check out this week’s Top 20 after the jump:

Billboard Top 20 albums:


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Chart Stalker 6/23/11: Bad Meets Evil and Tops the Charts

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