WEEK IN PREVIEW: HERE’S
WHAT'S BEHIND DOOR NUMBER 3

OK, numerologists, this is what will happen at retail for the week just ended. Things change, of course, and this site is hardly the most reliable source of information, but you’re reading this, so what the heck.

This week’s chart-topper will almost certainly be Seventeen Days, the latest from The Doors…oops—wrong century. Make that from Republic Universal’s 3 Doors Down. The album looks like it’ll do somewhere in the 200k-210k range in a healthy first week—and rock needs a hit right about now, if only to keep Green Day company.

Speaking of the Reprise pop/punk avatars and just-named Grammy winners for best rock album, they should come in at #3 on 110k or so, behind G-Unit/Aftermath/Interscope’s The Game, who’s got legs as well as healed-up gunshot wounds.

The big three will be followed by two more debuts (we think), Motown’s Brian McKnight and MCA Nashville’s Lee Ann Womack, who’ll fight it out for the fourth spot, with both projected to finish around 105k.

Two more incumbents—Capitol’s Grammy Noms collection (90k-ish) and Kenny Chesney’s ’tweener (BNA, 80-85k)—will be dueling with two more bows, Reprise crooner Michael Buble and BNA’s Totally Country singles comp, which should each finish in the neighborhood of 80-85k.

It’ll be a free-for-all for the last two spots in the Top 10 among Capitol’s Tina Turner, J’s Kelly Clarkson, Columbia’s John Legend, LaFace/ZLG’s Usher and Shady/Interscope’s Eminem, all of whom are steaming toward 70-75k. Usher’s number may not be up next week as dramatically as expected after he failed to take home a Grammy in any of the major categories. Ray Charles, of course, is another story...

These projections are like Chicago weather: if you don’t like it, just wait five minutes. Till then…