Michael Jackson Back on Chart Hits

15 July 2009 |


Michael Jackson is still King, but Maxwell and Hannah Montana make for a nice royal court.

Despite big bows from the Brooklyn crooner and the Disney queen, the late King of Pop had the top-selling album in the country for the third straight week, as Number Ones moved another 349,000 copies, per Nielsen SoundScan, making for a 1.1 million-copy tally for all his titles. This is Jackson's best week so far, both for an individual title and collectively, thanks largely to last week's memorial service coverage and retailers finally getting completely stocked up.

The music legend, who also had the week's third best-seller in Thriller (264,000 copies), dominated the catalog charts so thoroughly that he set yet another record. This time, Jackson-related titles took up the top 12 spots, a feat never before accomplished. (In previous weeks, he set records by taking 9 of the Top 10 and then the entire Top 10.)

Because they are catalog titles, Jackson's albums are not eligible for the Billboard 200 charts, which gave Maxwell the opportunity to score his second career chart-topper with BLACKsummers'night. The R&B crooner, who previously hit No. 1 eight years ago with Now, sold 316,000 copies of his new disc.

The Hannah Montana 3 soundtrack followed at No. 2, selling 137,00 copies. While prior Hannah Montana discs seemed to top the charts like Groundhog Day, both of her 2009 soundtracks placed in the runner-up spot. Hannah Montana: The Movie did so earlier this year with a similar tally of 139,000 discs.

In other chart action, rockers All Time Low scored an all-time career high at No. 4, shifting 63,000 copies of Nothing Personal.

Thanks to Jackson's sales spike and big releases from Maxwell and Hannah Montana, overall album sales were up 5 percent over last week and nearly equal to the same week last year.

2 comments:

Marketing Sociologist said...

Enjoy your writing style and reporting. Just blogged about this at TweenMusic.blogspot.com. Great to find other journalists out there. You're good.

Lilian said...

great people with great voices deserves great rewards right!lucky people...great post!