Ashanti Edges Beyonce
Ashanti’s Chapter II tallied a second week at Number One,
selling 135,000 copies, according to SoundScan. The R&B singer
just edged Beyonce Knowles’ Dangerously in Love, which
sold 132,000 copies.
Beyond that, no other release registered six-figure sales.
Country singer Trace Adkins sold 56,000 copies of Volume 1:
Greatest Hits at Number Nine and Thalia jumped in at Number
Eleven with her self-titled, English-language debut, which sold
50,000 copies. The only other debut in the Top 100 was Peter
Malick’s New York City, which arrived at Number Fifty-four
with sales of 20,000, in no small part due to the presence of Norah
Jones’ name on the cover of his album. Those three newcomers and
The Very Best of George Benson (Number 138) were the only
new releases to chart in the Top 200.
With the rookies struggling, how did the vets perform? Poorly.
Total sales in the Top 200 on this week’s chart were down to 3.4
million from 3.9 million a week ago. And that figure is a
staggering slip from 4.5 million this time last year, when, if
memory serves, folks were marveling at how lousy sales were. Bad
seems to be redefining itself each year as the major labels are
finding fewer blockbusters. Nearly a third of the albums in this
week’s Top 100 weren’t even released in 2003. That’s good news for
albums with legs like Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me,
which sits at Number Eight with sales of 61,000 a year and a half
after its release. And it’s grim for acts like Marilyn Manson,
whose The Golden Age of Grotesque has fallen to Number 101
after just two months of release, and in spite of hearty summer
promotion on Ozzfest.
Next week doesn’t look to thaw the freeze. Macy Gray’s latest is
the highest wattage album to arrive in stores this week. But sales
of her last album, 2001’s The Id, failed to match those of
her 1999 debut, The Trouble With Being Myself, and short
of a monster single dropping from the sky, Trouble looks
poised for sales closer to the latter. Another week of Ashanti and
Beyonce duking it out looks to be on order, though as each of those
albums loses new release momentum, look for Evanescence’s
Fallen (which at Number Three with sales of 72,000 is
likely runner up for the year’s biggest debut) to take a possible
shot at the top.
This week’s Top Ten: Ashanti’s Chapter II; Beyonce
Knowles’ Dangerously in Love; Evanescence’s
Fallen; Luther Vandross’ Dance With My Father; 50
Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’; Michelle Branch’s Hotel
Paper; Metallica’s St. Anger; Norah Jones’ Come
Away With Me; Trace Adkins’ Volume 1: Greatest Hits;
and Cher’s The Very Best of Cher.