Twain Eclipses Career-Best Debuts for McGraw, J.Lo
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country pop diva Shania Twain ruled the music charts for a second week with blockbuster sales of her latest release, “Up!” — eclipsing career-best album debuts by fellow country star Tim McGraw and singer-actress Jennifer Lopez.
A new live album from ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and a posthumous release from slain rapper Tupac Shakur also notched strong sales their first week in stores as record merchants cashed in on the start of the holiday shopping season.
Twain’s new double-CD set, consisting of 19 tracks recorded both as country-style arrangements and as mainstream pop tunes, sold more than 625,000 copies in the week ended Dec. 1, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures issued on Wednesday by her label, Mercury Records.
That was more than enough to keep Twain’s fourth release at the top of the pop album and country charts for a second straight week and to push her two-week tally past the 1.5 million mark.
“Up!” opened with first-week sales of 874,000 copies, a career benchmark for Twain that portends a commercial powerhouse in the making for Mercury, a Nashville-based imprint of Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group.
Twain’s previous release, 1997’s “Come On Over,” got off to a much more modest start, notching-first week sales of just 172,000 copies. That LP went on to tally U.S. retail sales of over 14 million units, ranking as the best-selling album since SoundScan’s inception in 1994, her label said.
MCGRAW, LOPEZ LOG BIGGEST DEBUTS
Twain’s winning streak robbed country compatriot McGraw of a No. 1 opening for his new album, “Tim McGraw & the Dancehall Doctors,” which sold nearly 602,000 copies its first week to land at No. 2 on both the pop and country charts behind “Up!.”
Still, it was by far the biggest album debut ever for McGraw, doubling the first-week sales of nearly every one of his seven previous releases, said a spokeswoman for his independent label, Curb Records.
Lopez also scored the biggest debut of her singing career, as her fourth album, “This Is Me … Then,” sold 314,000 copies its first week to enter the charts at No. 6. The album includes an ode to her Hollywood fiance, Ben Affleck, “Dear Ben,” in which Lopez promises, “There’s no way I’d leave you/It’s just not a reality.”
Her previous best, “J.Lo,” sold 272,000 copies during its first week in January of 2001 to top the charts while her hit film, “The Wedding Planner,” was No. 1 at the U.S. movie box office. Her latest film, “Maid in Manhattan,” opens next week.
Two other new releases landed in the top 10 this week. The two-CD Tupac Shakur collection “Better Dayz,” a follow-up to last year’s “Until the End of Time,” opened at No. 5 with sales of 366,000 copies, Interscope Records said. Meanwhile, the double-album “Back in the U.S. Live 2000,” featuring mainly Beatles tunes performed by McCartney on tour, debuted at No. 8 with 224,000 units sold, said his label, Capitol Records.
Rounding out the top 10 was the soundtrack to the Eminem movie “8 Mile” at No. 3, followed by the “Now 11” compilation from various artists at No. 4 and three female solo artists — Faith Hill at No. 7 with “Cry,” Avril Lavigne at No. 9 with “Let Go,” and Christina Aguilera at No. 10 with “Stripped.”
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