FOO’S NEXT
Based on first-day sales reports from those music retailers whose stores haven’t been paved for parking lots, RCA/RMG’s Foo Fighters are set to score their first #1 U.S. album next week as their seventh studio effort, Wasting Light, will debut with a total of between 215-225k. That would be the fourth highest debut of the year after Adele, Britney Spears and Chris Brown, all four Sony Music titles, with three of them from RCA/Jive, including two back-to-back.
The Foos' total on their seventh studio album is almost 33% higher than the debut of Echoes Silence Patience & Grace, which totaled 169k its first week in Sept. 2007. The band’s 2005 double album, In Your Honor, entered the charts at #2 in June 2005 with 310k sold behind Coldplay’s X&Y, that year’s third-largest top-selling debut behind 50 Cent and Kanye West.
Next highest debut will go to Rounder bluegrass standout Alison Krauss & Union Station, after her Grammy-winning stint with Robert Plant. Paper Airplane, her first album of new material since 2007’s Raising Sand, should do between 60-65k.
Paul Simon’s Hear Music/Concord debut, the world beat-flavored So Beautiful or So What, which critics are calling his best since 1990’s Rhythm of the Saints and comparing to Graceland, is looking in the 55-60k range.
Veteran Warner Music Latina Grammy winners Mana return with Drama Y Luz, which could do in the 50-55k range, muy bien para ellos.
Lava/Universal Republic U.K. sensation Jessie J’s debut, Who You Are, looks for a 30-35k debut after her rousing U.S. performance on SNL last month.
Minneapolis prog-hop collective Atmosphere’s latest Rhymesayers album, The Family Sign, appears headed for 25-30k, the same total eyed by Interscope downtown alternative darlings TV on the Radio’s Nine Types of Light, the Brooklyn bohos’ first album since 2008’s acclaimed Dear Science and fifth studio effort overall.
The market was down 11% vs. last week, up 11% vs. same week last year and now down 4% year to date.
To celebrate, imagine that you’re 1% of the
