Staind Break in at No. One
Break the Cycle indeed. After a lengthy rock & roll chart draught, the one two punch of Tool’s Lateralus and Staind‘s Break the Cycle has put the electric guitar back on top of the charts, as the latter debuted at Number One this week with sales of 716,003 according to SoundScan, just missing the year’s high mark of 732,000 set in early March by the Dave Matthews Band’s Everyday.
Still, Break the Cycle‘s numbers were good enough to best whopping debuts by Janet Jackson, Destiny’s Child as well as Tool’s 555,000 from last week. As a matter of fact, Break the Cycle‘s first-week tally stomped the combined sales of the other four discs in the week’s Top Five (Tool’s Lateralus, Destiny’s Child’s Survivor, Redman’s Malpractice and Missy Elliott’s Miss E . . . So Addictive).
The remainder of the Top Fifty was also peppered with newcomers. Tyrese’s 2000 Watts snuck in at Number Ten, while Static-X’s Machine just missed, landing at Number Eleven with sales slightly north of 80,000. Bon Jovi’s first live album, One Wild Night: Live 1985-2001 (Number Twenty), the Faith Hill-embellished soundtrack to Pearl Harbor (Number Thirty-one), City High’s self-titled debut (Number Thirty-four), Sticky Fingaz’s Black Trash (Number Forty-four), Lil’ Jon and the Eastside Boyz’s Put Yo Hood Up (Number Forty-six) and Stabbing Westward’s Stabbing Westward (Number Forty-seven) all found their way into the top fifty.
Still for a holiday weekend, sales were less than hardy. Discounting debuts, only four albums in the top fifty (the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge, Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory, 112’s Part III and Train’s Drops of Jupiter) showed sales spikes from the previous week.
It was also a slow week for sales milestones. Armed with hit singles by U2, Britney Spears and ‘N Sync, Now That’s What I Call Music! 6 surpassed the 2 million copies sold mark.
As for next week, the hit parade of fresh-faced newcomers into the Top Ten, may come to a halt, as the Goo Goo Dolls’ rehashing of their past, What I Learned About Ego, Opinion, Art and Commerce, Air’s 10,000 Hz Legend and new country star Brad Paisley’s Part II look like the best contenders, but with a strong set of hip-hop, R&B and now riffing guitars settling into the Top Ten, it might be a tough club to crack. But the next two months look promising for guys with guitars as Blink-182, Stone Temple Pilots, Slipknot, System of a Down, and to a lesser extent, Radiohead, will drop new albums on kids cutting grass for summer wages.
This week’s Top Ten: Staind’s Break the Cycle (716,003 copies sold); Tool’s Lateralus (197,543); Destiny’s Child’s Survivor (175,237), Redman’s Malpractice (147,560); Missy Elliott’s Miss E . . . So Addictive (136,248); Janet Jackson’s All for You (111,674); Now That’s What I Call Music! 6 (110,725); the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge (98,951); Weezer’s Weezer (96,572); and Tyrese’s 2000 Watts (91,593).