LADY GOES GAGA IN U.K.
Lady Gaga's Interscope album Born This Way scored the biggest first-week sales of the year int he U.K. with a debut of 215k units, more than the rest of the Top 10 titles combined.
The album will top the HITS Album sales chart today with a total now estimated at more than 1 million, easily the highest of the year and expected to best Taylor Swift, who scored 1.04 million with her Speak Now release last October. Stay tuned to our Building Album Sales chart to see how high it will go.
The U.S. figures were buttressed by Amazon's two-day 99 cents sale last week, which moved an estimated 450k downloads, costin the giant online retailer approximately $3.2 million, at a loss of about $7.40 per unit.
Gaga's opening U.K. sales narrowly beat Adele's first-week tally of 208k for 21 earlier this year. Born This Way was joined in the top 10 by its predecessor The Fame, which rose 11-7 and now had U.K. sales of more than 2.5 million copies. Gaga also has three singles in the Top 20, with "Judas" falling 8-9, the "Born This Way" title track 16-17 and "The Edge of Glory" 6-18. "Hair" fell 13-68.
XL Recordings' 21, which had spent 16 of the previous 17 weeks at #1, dipped to #2, but Adele's previous album 19 held at #3. The first single from the current album "Rolling in the Deep" moved back 34-26, as the Glee Cast version of the track debuted at #49.
The new album chart also saw Bruno Mars climb back #5-4 with Doo-Wops & Hooligans (Elektra/Warner Music) and the Prodigy posting a #5 debut with the live CD and DVD World's On Fire (Take Me to the Hospital/Cooking Vinyl). Jessie J's Who You Are (Lava/Universal Island) rose 8-6.
There was a #17-13 spurt for Noah & the Whale's Last Night On Earth, while U.S. soul singer Aloe Blacc continued his U.K. progress, as the album Good Things (Epic/Sony Music Entertainment) jumped #26-14 and the single "I Need A Dollar" #4-3.
"Give Me Everything" (J/Sony Music Entertainment) by Pitbull featuring Nayer, Afrojack and Ne Yo, landed for a second week atop the singles chart.
