Ruben Bounces Alicia
American Idol winner Ruben Studdard sold 416,000 copies of
his debut album Soulful, according to SoundScan, to give
the TV show its third chart-topping alum.
While Studdard’s numbers easily trounced the week’s Number Two
album, Alicia Keys’ The Diary of Alicia Keys (which sold
342,000 to bring its two-week total to 961,000), they inevitably
invite comparison to those of his Idol runner-up Clay
Aiken, who set the bar higher when he sold 613,000 copies of his
Measure of a Man two months ago.
Still, it’s hard to complain about sales of Soulful‘s
magnitude, and the record was something of a Pied Piper this week,
leading the rush of holiday sales spikes. Not counting the eight
newcomers to the Top Fifty, only five albums didn’t
experience a sales increase from the previous week, with sales for
the Top 200 taking a monstrous shot north from 7.7 million last
week to 10.4 million. Twenty-four of those albums posted six-figure
sales.
As for the other newcomers, Musiq didn’t quite match the Number One performance of his last album, but his Soulstar still sold 156,000 copies at Number Thirteen. Reunited rap trio the Westside
Connection’s Terrorist Threats (Number Sixteen, 136,000
copies sold), Avant’s Private Room (Number Eighteen,
128,000), the Big Tymers’ Big Money Heavy (Number
Twenty-one, 116,000), Kelis’ Tasty (Number Twenty-seven,
94,000) and the Offspring’s Splinter (Number Thirty,
88,000) also posted strong first-week sales.
Next week’s chart should feature similarly big sales, as holiday
shoppers scramble to stuff stockings with music.
This week’s Top Ten: Ruben Studdard’s Soulful; Alicia
Keys’ The Diary of Alicia Keys; Now That’s What I Call
Music! 14; Toby Keith’s Shock N Y’all; Josh Groban’s
Closer; OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below;
Rod Stewart’s The Great American Songbook, Volume II;
Hilary Duff’s So Yesterday; Sheryl Crow’s Very Best of
Sheryl Crow; and Britney Spears’ In the Zone.