It's finally warming up in our little corner of New York, but the album sales climate remains Frozen.
The soundtrack for the Disney film spent its 11th week atop the Billboard 200, selling another 259,000 copies. And yes, that's the album's best-selling week yet in its 20-plus week run. Album sales overall saw a significant boost last week, which analysts suggest is the result of the lead up to Easter, a buying period that strongly favors family-friendly work (such as Frozen). That bears true for this week's new albums as well, although none came close to touching the reigning champ.
August Alsina took the no. 2 spot this week, selling 69,000 copies of his debut album Testimony. That may not seem like much when compared to Frozen, but it more than trumps last week's top debut when MercyMe moved 26,000 copies.
The rest of this week's debuts followed directly behind Alsina, and all beat out MercyMe (sorry guys). NEEDTOBREATHE starts out at no. 3 with its album Rivers In The Wasteland, which sold 49,000 copies and set an all-time high for the group. Jason Derulo also set a personal mark, selling 44,000 copies of Talk Dirty To Me and coming in at no. 4 (you can check out the thoughts of the Music Times staff on the album here). Ingrid Michaelson was the last debut in the Top 10 this week, as her Lights Out moved 37,000 copies and took no. 5
The rest of the Top 10 proved that Easter buyers were looking for popular and non-parental advisory material for those Easter baskets. The trend starts with Luke Bryan and Crash My Party moving up to no. 6 with more than 33,000 in sales. Bryan has quite the grip on the country market, but he's followed closely behind by Pharrell Williams, whose G I R L fell five spots to no. 7.
Lorde comes back into the Top 10 at no. 8, selling 26,000 more copies of Pure Heroine. Boy group 5 Seconds of Summer sticks around for at least one more week with its EP She Looks So Perfect, selling just less than 26,000 copies in the process. Truly topping off the kid-friendly nature of the Top 10 this week is NOW 49, which sold 22,000 copies during its 11th week on the chart.
