Katy Perry has the album of the week with an estimated 287K in sales. All three of the big shows are represented on the chart this week. XFUS’s Fifth Harmony has the top reality singing show contestant album debuting in 6th with an estimated 29K in sales. Idol’s Scotty McCreery is 14th in his second week with a below normal drop of 63% (usual around 70%). Cassadee Pope is 24th in her third week also with a below normal drop of 36% (usual 40%ish).
This week, Kelly Clarkson (Winner, Season 1 of Idol) and Susan Boyle (Runner-up, Season 3 of BGT) are dropping albums so we should see some one-day estimates today. They are both entering this year’s Christmas derby. Every year, people wonder who is buying all this Christmas music and every year I say “Me” (and hundreds of thousands of other people). Despite the short selling window, a Christmas album has been in the top 5 selling albums of the year in four of the last six years. The numbers they can pull in week after week as we move towards Christmas are staggering. Josh Groban sold 3.7M! With Christmas albums relatively cheap to produce (most of the songs are covers including some that have passed into the public domain and some Christmas albums can be recorded in a couple of days), there can be some serious coin in these albums.
FuzzyWuzzy posted an interesting article about the Christmas albums from Yahoo (here). They mention that if Kelly (or Mary J Blige) end up with the top Christmas album of the year, they would be the first American female to do so (previous females to achieve this are Canadians (Celine Dion and Sarah McLachlan) or the UK (Charlotte Church and Susan Boyle)). Kelly would also be the second Idol to do so (Clay Aiken dominated the Holiday Album chart in 2004). If Susan Boyle has the number one album, she will be only the third to repeat (Idol Judge Harry Connick Jr and Kenny G have done it before). Last year, Rod Stewart was the chart topper (and he can barely croak out a song anymore).
Personally, I think that Susan’s novelty time is drawing to a close. I think that Kelly Clarkson is primed to take this. She has an amazing voice that goes well with Christmas Songs, she is popular and she’ll even get some good radio airplay. But, who knows with these Christmas albums? Duck Dynasty is releasing an album and that could take the novelty factor. X-Factor’s Leona Lewis is also releasing an album.
This is the weekly sales thread. Please post numbers as you find them. Thanks!
