ONE-DAY SALES: AVRIL AND USHER TO DUKE IT OUT FOR #1

We wouldn’t go as far as to say, “No debuts is good debuts.” Some puns just aren’t worth reaching for.

But the fact is, no album hitting the street yesterday will be a factor in determining the top of next week’s Album Chart, and that’s good news for Avril and/or Usher.

It’s more difficult than usual for our retail lab technicians to dial in the predict-o-meter on this week, since it’s springboarding off of a very strong Memorial Day Monday, which was fueled by all kinds of big-box supersales at your Best Buys, Wal-Marts, Targets, Circuit Cities and the like. But that difficulty notwithstanding, it looks to our analysts like next week’s #1 chart berth will belong to either Lavigne’s Under My Skin (Arista/RMG) or Usher’s Confessions (LaFace/ZLG)—the former riding the momentum from a big 356k debut week, and the latter having found its level and still shifting major units going into its 10th week of release.

This week’s #2, Slipknot, is expected to settle to the #3 position.

In spite of the lack of new releases headed for Top 10 sales this week, however, Monday’s sales heft should help keep the market from showing a huge dropoff compared to the week before.

For the sales cycle ended Sunday, the market was up 9.01% compared to the week before and up 11.15% compared to the same week last year. Cumulatively, sales are up 7.65% for the year so far, compared to year-ago figures.