WEEK IN PREVIEW: BRITNEY IN THE ZONE
You only have to be in the office for two, maybe two and a half days this week, so perhaps you won’t even notice that there are a handful of huge records charting on Tuesday or that there are big records in the stores. Of course, when you’re dragged to the mall on Friday’s official start of the Christmas shopping season, you’ll notice that there are actual people buying actual things, some of which are the shiny round things that allow you to make a living.
As for this week’s album chart, Britney Spears (Jive) will be #1 with her fourth album. Reports from retail suggest that she could top the 600k mark before it’s all done. Behind her is Blink-182 (Geffen), looking like it could top 320k, which is a pretty big number, don’t you think? Blink will be in two-way hyphenated fight for second with G-Unit, so keep watching the chart—we need the traffic.
In the 250k range is the de-Spectorized Let It Be from the Beatles (Capitol/EMI). But wait, there’s more: the best of from the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Warner Bros.) could cross 100k and the live, three-disc set from the Dave Matthews Band (RCA) could hit the 100k mark on CD, 50k on DVD.
Sony pushed up the release date on the new Korn (Epic) from tomorrow to last Friday, but said today that shipping problems delayed records getting to stores. Korn now appears to be headed towards sales of 100k.
On the shelves Tuesday are Missy Elliott (Elektra), Puddle of Mudd (Interscope), Enrique Iglesias (Interscope), No Doubt’s greatest hits (Interscope), a remixed Nelly (Fo’ Reel/Universal), and Nelly Furtado (DreamWorks). In stomachs Thursday: turkey, stuffing, pie. Mmmmm, pie.
