Taylor Swift can top the charts as much as she likes but there's one mark she's unlikely to get this year: Most weeks atop the Billboard 200. That honor belongs to the Frozen soundtrack (13), but that album came early on in the year when new releases were small. Swift has held the spot down with 1989 for three weeks in the heat of the pre-Christmas sales rush. She was unable to take the no. 3 highest sales week of the year (she's got the top two spots) but she still went big, selling 312,000 more copies of her album. She'll finally get competition next week, from One Direction.
The rest of the top spots were taken by new contenders as nos. 2-6 were filled by new drops. The Foo Fighters found themselves up against some stiff competition obviously but Sonic Highways at least managed to take no. 2, selling 190,000 copies upon its debut. Of course, if Dave Grohl wanted to beat Swift maybe he should "f--king care" after all about how people listen to his music. In a rare occurrence, the no. 3 spot is also taken by an honest-to-goodness rock band, as Pink Floyd sells 170,000 copies of its The Endless River, which is rumored to be the prog icon's final set.
No. 4 is where things get interesting. Your correspondent predicted way back in July abouts that 2014 would produce two platinum albums by year's end: Taylor Swift in her first week (one-for-one) and Garth Brooks' Man Against Machine. His taking no. 4 with "only" 130,000 copies sold seems to suggest we were wrong. It's important to note that Brooks' own digital service, GhostTunes, is the only place where you can download the digital version of the album. However GhostTunes didn't report the number of copies sold. It's 2014, so we're assuming a few people went digital. How many is anyone's guess. This is a total amateur guess, but as country fans are more likely to go with a physical CD than fans from other genres, we'll reckon 50/50 and guess the true number sold was more like 260,000. And, sticking with country buyer themes, those numbers will continue to roll versus dropping off wildly. We'll see what happens by the end of the year.
Big K.R.I.T. was a less hyped debut but his Cadillatica sold 44,000 copies, a new high for the rapper, earning him the no. 5 spot. He was followed by the last new album in the Top 10: the self-titled solo album from Nick Jonas, which sold 37,000 copies.
Now 52 sticks around despite the siege of hot new releases, falling to no. 7 with 37,000 copies sold in its third week. Pentatonix might be in the fourth week of sales for That's Christmas To Me but it actually had its biggest sales push last week, selling 34,000 copies (a gain of more than 130 percent). It's still the only Christmas album to crack the Top 10 so far.
Sam Smith remains relevant at no. 9 with In The Lonely Hour, which has been on the charts for 23 weeks now and still managed to sell 30,000 copies. George Strait hasn't been around as long with The Cowboy Rides Away but the live album returns from no. 60 to no. 10 thanks to a new deluxe version available at Walmart, bringing in 30,000 in sales.
