CHART ATTACK: DEBUTS RULE THE TOP THREE
Live Nation/Interscope’s Madonna has topped the HITS Album Sales Chart with 116k, passing Twentieth Century Fox/Columbia’s Empire soundtrack in a photo finish. Season 1’s smash-filled ST earned 107k, locking it in at the #2 spot. The tables were turned, however, on the Sales Plus Streaming (SPS) Chart, where Empire snagged128k to Madge’s 122k. An array of singles from the show helped power it to the top. Meanwhile, bowing third on both charts, Luke Bryan’s spring-break collection hog-tied 84k in album sales and 95k at SPS for Capitol Nashville.
Big Machine’s Taylor Swift, down just 7% on the album side with 39k, moves to #4 in her 20th week on the chart. Republic’s steamy Fifty Shades of Grey ST commands the rear of the Top 5 with 36k. On SPS, the two trade places, but they both more than double their numbers due to Taylor’s trifecta of singles and Fifty Shades’ star-studded roster, which popped out massive hits from both The Weeknd and Ellie Goulding.
Epic’s Meghan Trainor was up 9% with 21k in album sales for Title, jumping #15-11 and making her the only act in the Top 35 with a positive percent-based change. We’re “All About” it. Thanks to “Uptown Funk,” RCA’s Mark Ronson continues to take advantage of the SPS model, landing at #17 with 25k, while not even appearing in the Album Chart’s Top 50. Bruno put it best: “Hot damn!”
Streeting this week are albums from Epic’s Modest Mouse, Red Bull’s AWOLNATION and Epitaph’s Sleeping With Sirens. FYI, the latter were just featured in our New & Developing special issue.
Oh, and then there’s Kendrick Lamar. Unless you’re living under a rock, you already know that TDE/Interscope’s hip-hop megastar surprised the music world with the Sunday leak of To Pimp a Butterfly, his third full-length and follow-up to 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, which was nominated for both Album of the Year and Best Rap Album at the 56th annual Grammys.
The already acclaimed album was #1 at iTunes at presstime and was streamed more than 9.6m times in its first day on Spotify. Expect this one to be big.
