This week's Billboard 200 Top 10 was chock full of new albums but the main story has to be country music's recent success. This week marks the third in a row where the genre has placed a new album atop the charts. Florida Georgia Line was this week's representative as Anything Goes sold 197,000 copies, its first no. 1. Still, the group can only hope to achieve the total sales of its last record, Here's To The Good Times. Last week's top album, Jason Aldean's Old Boots, only falls to no. 2 after selling 91,000 copies.
Bob Seger has been around a lot longer than those two acts but he's still got to be happy with the success of Ride Out. The no. 3 position is the best he's ever charted, although its 59,000 in sales is far from his best. You+Me, a combination of pop star Pink and Dallas Green (better known by performance alias City and Colour), released its first album Rose Ave. at no. 4 with 50,000 units sold.
Only two more albums managed to return from last week. Barbra Streisand remained strong with her duets album Partners, which still sold 40,000 copies in its fifth week on the charts. More interesting is Sam Smith, who returned to the Top 10 in the last spot last week after a brief hiatus. His In The Lonely Hour continued to move its way up, coming in at no. 6 with 37,000 additional sales this week. He owes the boost to A) his new single "I'm Not The Only One" and his performance of said single on Jimmy Kimmel.
Hip-hop may be the most culturally relevant genre of our current era but it sure doesn't sell on a consistent clip like country does. The Game was selling nearly 250,000 copies of his new albums circa 2008 but he only moved 33,000 copies of Blood Moon: Year of The Wolf last week, coming in at no. 7. Hoodie Allen can be less disappointed with his 30,000 in sales for People Keep Talking, as he has less of a history to live up to.
U2 may not have been going for sales with Songs of Innocence, so it won't be too disappointed considering that its new album sold about 400,000 fewer copies in its first week than the band's last album. As you surely know, the group released the album for free, automatically to your iTunes account. Still, 4 percent of the 28,000 who purchased Songs opted to download it. Go figure.
The last entry this week was Jessie J, who debuted with 25,000 copies sold for her new album Sweet Talker.
