Chart Kind to Grammy Winners
While none of the winners at the forty-third annual Grammys dented SoundScan’s Top Ten, the awards show did prove to be a decision-maker for record buyers. U2 and Steely Dan, two of the evening’s biggest winners, saw the sales of All That You Can’t Leave Behind and Two Against Nature, respectively, soar after picking up three statues each.
For U2, the Grammy boost left them just shy of the Top Ten, as sales of All That You Can’t Leave Behind jumped 36,744 units to 85,430 and put it in the Number Eleven slot (from Number Thirty-five last week), while their Best of U2: 1980-1990 also saw a slight sales boost (from 7,014 to 8,432). Steely Dan didn’t exactly waltz into the top region of the charts, but Two Against Nature displayed the most visible growth of the Grammy collectors. The album failed to make SoundScan’s Top 200 last week (and the previous week, and the previous week . . .), but found a spot this week at Number Fifty-four, moving 31,922 copies, compared to 3,765 copies the week prior.
But the Grammy push only benefited artists involved in the show, either as a winners or performers. After a holiday weekend in which forty-four albums from the Top Fifty showed sales increases, the past week found a mere six albums (All That You Can’t . . ., Jill Scott’s Who Is Jill Scott?, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP, Moby’s Play, Destiny’s Child’s Writing’s on the Wall and the various artists Grammy pop collection) with increasing sales inside the Top Fifty.
As for Shaggy, Hotshot remained on top of the chart for the fourth straight week, though it suffered its first sales drop after six weeks of increases. The album still moved an impressive 271,652, which dwarfed the nearest competitor, and the first real challenger in the Top Five in more than a month, Jim Johnston’s WWF: The Music Vol. 5, which scored a Number Two debut. Otherwise the Top Ten was a bona fide snoozefest, with nine of the ten titles holding spots close to the previous week. Only Sade’s Lovers Rock took a serious dive, vacating the Number Six slot and falling down to Number Nineteen.
But this week’s crop of releases brings promise. The Dave Matthews Band’s Everyday is the most obvious candidate to take a swipe at Hotshot. Matthews has shown chart muscle in the past: His low-key Live at Luther College with Tim Reynolds scanned 187,000 copies to land at Number Three in 1999, and the band’s last studio album, Before These Crowded Streets Scanned 422,000 copies for a Number One debut in May of 1998. A pair of hip-hop releases might provide the SoundScan version of term limits among the Top Ten incumbents. Wu-Tang rapper Cappadonna released his The Yin and the Yang and DJ Clue put together another mix on The Professional, Volume 2 yesterday.
This week’s Top Ten: Shaggy’s Hotshot (271,652 copies sold); Jim Johnston’s WWF: The Music Vol. 5; the Beatles’ 1 (126,020); Dido’s No Angel (123,959); Save the Last Dance soundtrack (120,425); Jennifer Lopez’s J.Lo (91,906); Lenny Kravitz’s Greatest Hits (90,800); Ja Rule’s Rule 3:36 (90,596); Crazy Town’s Gift of Game (86,695); and Ludacris’ Back for the First Time (85,829).