Shania Holds Off Aaliyah
Shania Twain’s Up! continued its holiday chart dominance
selling 373,000 copies last week, according to SoundScan, a 55,000
boost from the previous week. For Twain and Up!, it’s been
a four-week run in the top spot, and, with most of the holiday’s
big guns already fired, Twain looks to hold onto Number One into
2003. In fact, with January being a notoriously slow month for
releases, Up! stands a chance at running its streak to
nine.
Numbers were big again across the board as last-minute shoppers
nabbed some stocking stuffers. The Dixie Chicks’ Home
continues to be one of the year’s biggest sellers. Since the
November 26th re-release of the album with bonus goodies,
Home has climbed from Number Seventeen to Number Two. The
trio’s NBC special certainly didn’t hurt either. Last week,
Home sold 295,000 copies, doubling it’s tally from the
week prior.
The country queens put up numbers strong enough to hold off
Aaliyah’s first posthumous album, I Care 4 U, which
debuted at Number Three with sales of 280,000. Whitney Houston’s
Just Whitney and B2K’s Pandemonium were the Top
Ten’s other two newcomers at Number Nine and Ten, respectively,
with sales of 205,000 and 195,000.
Be it piracy or popularity, Nas likely did well by not queuing
up the release of God’s Son in a competition with Jay-Z’s
The Blueprint 2. The latter continued a lengthy streak of
Number One debuts five weeks ago, and this week it sits at Number
Twenty-seven with sales of 104,000. God’s Son sputtered
out to a Number Eighteen debut with sales of 156,000.
Phish fans proved to be more interested in the concert vibe than
the studio. The group’s heralded reunion record, Round
Room, did well by Phish studio album standards, but its Number
Forty-six debut with sales of 65,000 fell a bit short of
Farmhouse‘s Number Twelve bow two years ago with sales of
89,000. In Phish’s defense, try finding a ticket for their upcoming
reunion shows. A trio of hip-hop newcomers squeaked into the Top
Fifty: Common’s Electric Circus (Number Forty-seven,
65,000 copies sold), 504 Boyz’s Ballers (Number
Forty-nine, 60,000) and Swizz Beatz’s Presents G.H.E.T.T.O.
Stories (Number Fifty, 59,000).
Beyond that, there wasn’t much new action aside from sales going
up, up, up. Only three albums in the Top Fifty — Mariah Carey’s
Charmbracelet (Number Fourteen, 173,000), 2Pac’s
Better Dayz (Number Twenty-one, 142,000) and Snoop Dogg’s
Paid tha Cost to Be da Boss (Number Forty-four, 69,000) —
didn’t benefit from a sales jump from the previous week.
This week’s Top Ten: Shania Twain’s Up!; Dixie Chicks’
Home; Aaliyah’s I Care 4 U; Tim McGraw’s Tim
McGraw and the Dancehall Doctors; 8 Mile soundtrack;
Avril Lavigne’s Let Go; Now That’s What I Call Music!
11; Jennifer Lopez’s This Is Me . . . Then; Whitney
Houston’s Just Whitney; and B2K’s
Pandemonium.