On the Charts: Kanye and 50 Fall to Reba McEntire, Plus Eddie Vedder, James Blunt Open Strong
The Big News: As predicted, Reba McEntire nabbed her first-ever Billboard number-one debut with her thirty-first album, Reba Duets, which features pairings with the likes of Justin Timberlake and Kelly Clarkson. Kanye West and 50 Cent both experienced massive second week drop-offs, but still turned out pretty impressive figures: Graduation fell 76 percent to nearly 226,000 copies sold, and Curtis dropped 79 percent to 143,000. View-eschewing Barry Manilow snuck in between Fifty and last week’s third runner up Kenny Chesney, as Manilow’s Greatest Songs of the Seventies moved 113,000 copies, which was good enough for a fourth place finish.
The Debuts: More than half of the top ten consisted of new releases. James Blunt’s All the Lost Souls came in at number seven (92,000 copies sold), followed by KT Tunstall’s life-saving Drastic Fantastic, Chamillionaire’s not-accurately titled Ultimate Victory and Twista’s Adrenaline Rush 2007. Eddie Vedder’s solo album (the soundtrack to the film Into the Wild) arrived at number eleven with nearly 40,000 copies, followed closely by Finnish goths H.I.M., Motion City Soundtrack, Diana Kral and Dropkick Murphys all debuted in the top twenty, the Used arrived at forty-two, the Donnas came in at eighty-nine and Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew hit the chart at 113.
Last Week’s Chart Heroes: Everyone knew Kanye and 50 would fall off a bit after their incredible debut sales week, so it’s no surprise the pair slid out of first and second place (by comparison, though, Chesney’s sales slipped a few percentage points less than theirs did). The soundtrack to High School Musical 2 is still stubbornly hanging around the top of the chart, but big recent sellers like T.I.’s T.I. Vs. Tip and Common’s Finding Forever aren’t having as much luck as their sales dipped to 19,000 and 16,000, respectively.