Linkin Park Top the Charts, Don’t Surpass Jay-Z
Linkin Park’s brand new album “Minutes to Midnight” topped the charts this week, hitting the highest first-week total of
2007 with the full weight of 623,000 discs sold. Such a result is the second best for the last two years and puts them
behind only Jay-Z and his “Kingdom Come” with 680,000 copies sold last December. However, Linkin Parks’ own “Meteora”
started off in 2003 with 810,000 sales.
One would make en anormously brave understatement, should he or she say that Linkin Park met little resistance while
fighting for this victory. Linkin Park met no resistance at all, for record labels clearly preferred to delay their releases
for the following weeks to not face the Californian monster eating their sales off.
500,00 copies behind, the second place of the charts is safely occupied by the R&B star Tank whose album “Sex, Love & Pain”
sold 103,00 units. Place third belongs to Michael Buble, whose “Call Me Irresponsible” is fast sliding down by 39 per cent
if compared to previous week. This week saw 88,000 people buying a copy of Buble’s album to get it home.
The Chicago-based rock group Wilco is at place four, with 87,000 copies of “Sky Blue Sky” paid money for. It was the
biggest charting and sales week ever for Wilco, although almost twenty five per cent of its sales were carried out by
digital services. The top 5 this week is locked by the country performer Gretchen Wilson, who made her benefit from 73,000
discs this time. There were 16 newcomers to the chart, such as Rufus Wainwright, Pink Martini and the soundtrack to “Shrek
the Third” which features the Ramones, Led Zeppelin, Fergie and Wolfmother. The celestial company rests at a comfortable
#44.
All in all, album sales rose up 1% from last week at 8.59 million units and fell down 7% compared to the same week last
year.