Beatles “1” Remains on Top
Another week, another couple-hundred-thousand-plus copies of the Beatles 1 rung up on American cash registers. With only a couple of marginally interesting blips on the radar, it was business as usual in record stores last week, with not a single new entry breaking into the SoundScan Top 10. Not that the closest contender, the soundtrack to Save the Last Dance, didn’t come close — it leapt from No. 41 the previous week all the way up to No. 11, with sales nearly doubling from 41,375 copies to 76,084.
As for the Beatles, 1 has now spent seven weeks at the top of the chart. What accounts for 1‘s staying power? Ozzy Osbourne, of all people, may have something to do with it. “Because everybody knows that I’m a Beatles nut, I must have about half of what that album sold,” Osbourne admitted to Rolling Stone earlier this week. “Everybody and their friend bought me the 1 album for Christmas — I’ve got a stack of the fucking things at home.”
The Beatles’ tying Eminem’s chart run is by no means a sure thing, however. An upset could be in the making courtesy of reggae man Shaggy’s Hotshot, which stayed at No. 2 for a second week but saw a significant jump in sales, from 185,636 copies up to 191,154. By comparison, 1 sales dropped from 268,551 to 260,179. And even if the Beatles do hold off Shaggy to snag an eighth week at the top, making it to nine will involve beating Jennifer Lopez’s new album, J.Lo, which hits stores next week.
Apart from the Save the Last Dance soundtrack, other noteworthy chart movers last week included Crazy Town’s Gift of Game (storming from No. 46 to No. 23 with sales of 51,948 copies), Jill Scott’s Who Is Jill Scott? (up from No. 57 to No. 39) and the Oz soundtrack (debuting at No. 42). And how ’bout that O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack? The T Bone Burnett-produced collection, which focuses on vintage and newly recorded songs from the Depression era, moved 25,166 copies last week to jump from No. 90 to No. 59 last week. And that’s nothing, really, considering that the previous week, it moved from No. 192 to No. 90. The Coen Brothers comedy has been met with mixed reviews, but the soundtrack (which features appearances by Emmylou Harris and Allison Krauss) is an unqualified success.
This week’s Top 10: The Beatles’ 1 (260,179 copies sold); Shaggy’s Hotshot (191,154), Now That’s What I Call Music! 5 (128,175); Creed’s Human Clay (114,562); Limp Bizkit’s Choclolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (97,847); Sade’s Lovers Rock (94,847); OutKast’s Stankonia (90,859); Snoop Dogg’s Tha Last Meal (89,610); Lenny Kravitz’s Greatest Hits (82,965) and Dido’s No Angel (80,211).