Chart Stalker 9/15/11: Strait to…#3?

A country superstar he may be, but the legendary George Strait couldn’t topple Lil Wayne or Adele from their perches at the top of the Billboard album charts this week. His Here For A Good Time makes a pretty respectable debut with 91,000 units sold, but lands at #3 on the list, behind Weezy’s 219,000 (a pretty steep dropoff in The Carter IV‘s second week…blame it on bad word of mouth) and Adele’s 121,000. Adele’s numbers continue to be mind-blowing. She’s almost at 3.5 million sold, with no end in sight. The album should maintain legs through the holidays and into next spring, assuming that it will clean the fuck up at next year’s Grammy Awards.

Strait has the only new album in this week’s Top 10, but that’s not to say that the upper reaches of the chart are not swarming with activity. Following it’s release on iTunes, The Beatles greatest hits collection 1 shoots to #4 after not appearing on the chart at all the week before. You mean there are people out there who *don’t* own a Beatles’ hits collection? Get the hell outta here. Meanwhile, Maroon 5’s Hands All Over continues it’s late-stage renaissance. Several weeks after being reissued with “Moves Like Jagger” (currently the #1 most downloaded song in the country), the year-old album winds up at #7 on the charts. As the song gains traction at radio, people are apparently getting hip (really late) to the fact that Adam Levine and co. have an album out. It’s not very good, though. Just saying.

It’s otherwise a fairly quiet release week, with the only newcomer in the Top 20 (other than Strait) being Hugh Laurie. Yes, THAT Hugh Laurie. Dr. House makes a solid bow at #16, moving about 20,000 units of Let Them Talk. And the TV season hasn’t even begun yet!

Over on the singles chart, there are a couple of big developments, including a couple that we neglected to mention last week. First of all, Gym Class Heroes’ “Stereo Hearts” entered the Top 10 last week, marking Travie McCoy’s third trip into the chart’s upper echelon. He shares space (or at least he did last week) with his ex-girlfriend Katy Perry, whose “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” set yet another chart record-marking her 69th straight week in the Top 10. Yep, at least one Katy Perry song has been in the Top Ten for something like 15 months straight. Crazy, huh? She’ll get a chance to rewrite yet another chart record soon, as “The One That Got Away” was just released to radio. Will she be the first artist to score six #1 hits from one album? Stay tuned-guess we’ll find out.

Oh, back to Gym Class Heroes. Their new song features Adam Levine, who finds himself the first artist to score simultaneous Top 10 hits as a solo artist and as a member of a group-that’s a pretty interesting chart statistic. Meanwhile, the big debut of the week goes to Kelly Clarkson, whose “Mr. Know-It-All” (man, she stays pissed at dudes) gets off to a #9 start on the digital download chart and a #18 debut on the overall Hot 100.

Next week, Lady Antebellum’s Own The Night will debut at the top, albeit with a MUCH smaller first week total than anticipated. Prognosticators are pegging the country trio’s first week at around 300,000-over 100,000 less people than purchased their last album, last year’s Need You Now, in it’s first week. Albums by Staind and Bush (among others) are scheduled to debut reasonably high in what will likely end up being a Top 20 crowded with new releases.

For now, here’s this week’s Top 20 albums:


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Chart Stalker 9/15/11: Strait to…#3?

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