Two words that every chart nerd over 30 said to themselves when looking at the top of this week’s chart. Mac Miller is from Pittsburgh, he’s half Jewish, he appears on the remix of Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” (does anyone even give a shit about Christina Aguilera being on that song anymore?) and…he has the #1 album in the country this week. His debut effort, Blue Slide Park, scans a healthy 144,000 copies to land the top slot. It becomes the second album by a debut artist on an independent label IN HISTORY to debut at #1 and it becomes only the second album on an independent label in 2011 to hit the top spot. Not. Bad.
I was bullish on there potentially being seven albums to cross the 100K barrier for a second consecutive week. However, we’ll have to settle for a still decent five. First, the debuts. The 40th installment of the venerable Now That’s What I Call Music series starts at #3, moving 119,000 copies. It’s followed by the Bruno Mars-led soundtrack to the fourth Twilight movie. 106,000 folks snatched that up and the movie doesn’t even come out until tomorrow. The other two albums in this week’s top 5 are the resilient Michael Buble Christmas album (#2, 123K), and, yes…Adele, who is #5 this week, adding another 104,000 to her till and coming about a week away from crossing the 4.5 million sold barrier.
Last week was all about the CMA Awards, and presenters, performers and winners all benefit in the sales department, led by Sugarland (+132%), The Band Perry (+112%), Eric Church (+61%) and Brad Paisley (+57%). Among non-country artists performing on the show, the biggest leap went to Matt Nathanson’s Modern Love, which increases 116%. Proving that it will be the Eighties forever, a performance of “Dancing on the Ceiling” on the show boosts Lionel Richie’s hits collection (+29%).
Over on the singles chart, another country artist scores two debuts in the top ten. It’s a name you should be quite familiar with by now-a lady by the name of Taylor Swift. The songs, “If This Was a Movie” and “Ours”, had previously only been available on the Target deluxe edition of her hit album Speak Now. They enter at #3 and #5 on the digital singles chart. The rest of the chart is pretty static, led once again by Rihanna’s “We Found Love”.
Segue!! Rihanna appears on Drake’s new album, Take Care, which will snag the top spot on next week’s album chart with a total north of 700,000. It will give the Canadian rapper-singer-actor the third highest debut of the year, behind Lady GaGa’s Born This Way and Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV. It’ll be the only six-figure debut of the week, but if Buble and Adele hold steady (which is almost a guarantee) and Biebs makes a third week bounceback similar to Buble’s last week, we could be looking at another rosy week with four albums in six figures.
Here’s the full Top 20 for the week:
1) Blue Slide Park | Mac Miller
2) Christmas | Michael Buble
3) Now That’s What I Call Music 40 | Various Artists
4) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Original Soundtrack) | Various Artists
5) 21 | Adele
6) Under The Mistletoe | Justin Bieber
7) Someone To Watch Over Me | Susan Boyle
8) Mylo Xyloto | Coldplay
9) Formula Vol. 1 | Romeo Santos
10) Wicked Game | Il Divo
11) Four The Record | Miranda Lambert
12) Ceremonials | Florence + The Machine
13) The Lost Children | Disturbed
14) Clear As Day | Scotty McCreery
15) Ambition | Wale
16) Heavenly Christmas | Jackie Evancho
17) Own The Night | Lady Antebellum
18) Open Invitation | Tyrese
19) Stronger | Kelly Clarkson
20) My Kinda Party | Jason Aldean
1 comment
Stephen says:
Nov 17, 2011
Congrats to Mac Miller, and his album has gotten some decent reviews to boot, but I just don’t get the fuss. I could only get halfway through Blue Slide Park before I just sighed and shut it off. The production is nice, but the lyrics are just boring and kind of lazy. Plus his flow is just so… generic. Maybe I am just out of touch and don’t know what good hip hop is.