Tool Top the Charts
Tool scored the fourth highest debut of the year with their third album, Lateralus, which sold 555,222 copies in its first week, according to SoundScan. The band’s first Number One album caps a successful year for Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan, whose side project, A Perfect Circle, released their debut album, Mer de Noms, one year ago today to a Number Four debut, with sales of nearly 200,000.
While Lateralus more than doubled the sales of its nearest competitor, the week was still a strong one for debuts, as four other albums splashed into the Top Ten: Missy Elliott‘s Miss E…So Addictive sold a quarter million copies to land at Number Two, edging two-week chart-topper, Destiny’s Child‘s Survivor, by nearly 30,000 units. Propelled by the new single, “Hash Pipe,” Weezer‘s self-titled third album found an audience hungry for their geek-rock that wasn’t exactly there five years ago when they released their second album, Pinkerton. Despite releasing their own single, “Imitation of Life,” early, R.E.M.‘s Reveal stumbled out of the gate, much like their previous album, 1998’s Up. The 126,647 copies that Reveal scanned last week combined with Up‘s opening week tally of 117,000 barely top the first-week sales of 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi (227,000), the last album the group recorded as a four-piece. Apparently the contingent of Bill Berry purists was more substantial, and dedicated, than previously thought. Meanwhile, Depeche Mode’s Exciter found its way in at Number Eight.
And still there were other top fifty newcomers. Megadeth’s The World Needs a Hero bowed in at Number Sixteen, Olivia’s self-titled debut arrived at Number Fifty-five and the Go-Go’s God Bless the Go-Go’s, their first album in seventeen years, landed at Number Fifty-seven.
Elsewhere, the Mother’s Day spending spree officially ended, as only a single non-debut album (the soundtrack to A Knight’s Tale) in the Top 100 showed a sales increase from the previous week, though, um, Armed Forces Day (May 20th) is the only day of note that might explain Mark Knopfler’s Sailing to Philadelphia cruising in from chart oblivion into the Number 130 slot, eight months after its release.
Next week promises another flurry of promising new releases including Redman’s Malpractice, Bon Jovi’s One Wild Night: Live 1985-2001, Staind’s Break the Cycle and More Music from Save the Last Dance, the sequel to last year’s hit soundtrack.
This week’s Top Ten: Tool’s Lateralus (555,222 copies sold); Missy Elliott’s Miss E . . . So Addictive (251,392); Destiny’s Child’s Survivor (221,884); Weezer’s Weezer (215,270); Janet Jackson’s All for You (149,947); R.E.M.’s Reveal (126,647); Now That’s What I Call Music! 6 (119,697); Depeche Mode’s Exciter (114,867); Wings’ Wingspan (107,485); and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack (92,927).