Fleetwood Mac Debut At No. 1
The Mac is back and they are blowing everyone away. Not
surprisingly, the new Fleetwood Mac album, The
Dance, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top
200 chart. The information came directly from Reprise Records, the band’s label, which said the album sold just over 199,000 units since its release last week.
Reprise president Howie Klein said the
company’s expectations for the album have been high from the
beginning, but that they are shocked by how well The Dance is doing. “Its performance has exceeded even our most optimistic
projections,” Klein said. “What makes its leap to the top of the
charts even more remarkable is the fact that due to the UPS strike,
many stores were unable to stock the album immediately,” he
added.
But don’t expect this album to do as well as Fleetwood Mac’s
biggest seller, Rumours, which has sold more than 25
million copies to date and held strong at No. 1 for 31 weeks when
it debuted in 1977. When Oasis’ Be Here
Now charts next week, it is a shoe-in to dethrone the Mac and
grab the top spot.
Puff Daddy and the Family had held the top
position for the past two weeks, but slipped to No. 2 after selling
only 166,500 copies of No Way Out.
The other new debut in the Top 10 is Billy
Joel’s Greatest Hits Vol. III, which sold 90,000
units and came in at No. 9. As far as the rest of the Top 10, there
were no really big changes, with the exception of Matchbox
20, who moved up one position to No. 5.