Santana Scores His First No. 1 Album Debut
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Three years after the release of his Grammy-winning blockbuster “Supernatural,” rock guitar virtuoso Carlos Santana has outdone himself, shooting to the top of the pop charts with the first No. 1 album debut of his career.
Santana’s latest multi-artist collaboration, “Shaman,” sold nearly 300,000 copies its first week in stores, four times the first-week tally of “Supernatural” in September 1999, according to Nielsen SoundScan sales data issued on Wednesday by his label, Arista Records.
Country pop diva Faith Hill’s latest release, “Cry,” slipped a notch to No. 2 with sales of 195,000 copies in its second week, boosting her tally to nearly 668,000 units, according to her label, Warner Bros. Records, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc.
Two other new releases, “One by One” from the rock group Foo Fighters, and Rod Stewart’s collection of pop classics, “It Had to Be You … The Great American Songbook,” entered the charts in third and fourth place, respectively.
Stewart’s album, featuring the veteran rocker singing standards from the likes of George Gershwin and Cole Porter, marked his highest debut in at least a decade.
Meanwhile, the new Elvis Presley greatest-hits package, “Elvis: 30 #1 Hits,” fell to No. 5 in its fifth week.
Along with “Shaman” and the Elvis collection, the latest records from Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters and Stewart were distributed by BMG, the global music division of Bertelsmann AG.
Super-producer Clive Davis, the man behind Santana’s last big hit, “Supernatural,” also served as producer for “Shaman” and Stewart’s “Great American Songbook.”
A two-disc retrospective of Santana’s work, “The Essential Santana,” made a much smaller dent in the charts, selling just under 9,000 copies to debut at No. 125 in the top 200. That set, including such classics as “Evil Ways,” “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va,” was issued by Columbia/Legacy label the same day as “Shaman.” The label is owned by Japan’s Sony Corp.
Like “Supernatural,” which sold a whopping 25 million copies, Santana’s newest album pairs the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer with a variety of contemporary stars, including Dido, Macy Gray, Seal, Michelle Branch and Musiq.
By comparison, “Supernatural” followed a more gradual path to its mega-hit status, debuting at No. 19 on the charts and working its way up to No. 1 after 18 weeks in release.
It remained in top echelons of the charts for weeks thereafter and went on to earn nine Grammy Awards, including the prize for album of the year, and three Latin Grammys.
The album’s smash success marked a triumphant comeback for the 55-year-old guitarist who formed the band that bears his name in the 1960s, and it helped push Latin rock to the forefront of the American pop scene.
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