Chicks Back Home at No. One
The Dixie Chicks‘ Home, a chart-topper upon its release
last year, has proven quite a resilient record, reaching Number One
again with sales of 104,000, according to SoundScan. And its sales,
after twenty-three weeks of release, have handily topped 4 million
copies.
Though Norah Jones and her Come Away With Me were
bumped from the top, the record still tallied a strong 101,000
copies. Mary Star of the Sea the debut record by Billy
Corgan’s Zwan is one of the year’s first big debuts, though its
sales of 90,000 are a bit off of the first week number for the
Pumpkins’ swan song, 2000’s Machina/The Machines of God,
which also arrived on the charts at Number Three, but with 75,000
more buyers in its pocket.
Zwan wasn’t the week’s only debut. Contemporary Christian artist
Steven Curtis Chapman entered the charts at Number Twelve with
All About Love, which sold 51,000 copies. And even though
Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban’s Mambo Sinuendo, a collection
of Cuban-flavored instrumentals, would seem a challenging sell, it
moved 17,000 copies to come in at Number Fifty-two.
Next week should be particularly interesting, as 50 Cent’s
highly touted Get Rich or Die Tryin’ was moved up from
February 11th to a February 6th because tracks have been leaked
onto the Internet. As with last year’s The Eminem Show,
the album will have an abbreviated first week in stores (Thursday
through Sunday) by SoundScan’s yardstick. That said, the album will
likely have more momentum than any new offering thus far in
2003.
To that end, last week, a joke was made here about the 20,000
copies that 50 Cent’s Guess Who’s Back? scanned. The album
was incorrectly identified as his major-label debut, and not the
independent release that it is. Needless to say, the 30,000 copies
it moved over the most recent sales period (at Number Twenty-eight)
is a strong achievement for an independent release, and suggests
that the rapper’s real major label debut, Get
Rich, will make even more substantial ripples.
This week’s Top Ten: the Dixie Chicks’ Home; Norah
Jones’ Come Away With Me; Zwan’s Mary Star of the
Sea; Avril Lavigne’s Let Go; Jennifer Lopez’s
This Is Me . . . Then; the Chicago soundtrack;
Kid Rock’s Cocky; Shania Twain’s Up!; Missy
Elliott’s Under Construction; and the 8 Mile
soundtrack.