Linkin Park Edges Out Trey Songz for Number One
Linkin Park grabbed the number one spot on the Billboard 200 with this week’s release of A Thousand Suns, which just edged out Trey Songz‘s Passion, Pain & Pleasure. Final tally: A Thousand Suns, 241,000 copies; Passion, Pain & Pleasure, 240,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. This is Linkin Park’s third consecutive chart-topping album, but the opening week sales were way down compared to the 623,000 copies 2007’s Minutes to Midnight moved in its first week. However, Linkin Park and Trey Songz together helped boost the total album sales 11 percent over last week’s record low.
The Top 10 was heavily populated by new albums. Country singer Jamey Johnson scored the number four spot with his fourth album The Guitar Song, which sold 63,000 copies to finish one spot ahead of Robert Plant’s new Band of Joy. (The Guitar Song also earned four and a half stars from Rolling Stone .) Weezer’s Hurley and Brandon Flowers’ solo disc Flamingo both finished in the top 10, at number six and number eight, respectively.
Last week’s number one, Sara Bareilles’ Kaleidoscope Heart, dropped to number 12 in its second week. The MTV Video Music Awards boosted some albums, with Eminem’s Recovery (which came in at number three again), Florence and the Machine’s Lungs and Justin Bieber’s My World 2.0 all seeing a rise in sales.