Music Blogs

Jay-Z's American Gangster knocks the Eagles out of the #1 spot on Nielsen SoundScan's list of the nation's best-selling albums, while Garth Brooks' latest hits compilation debuts at #3.

American Gangster is Jay-Z's 10^th #1 album, which puts the rapper in a tie with Elvis Presley for second place among artists with the most #1 albums in the history of Billboard magazine's pop album chart. Only the Beatles, with 19 chart-topping albums, have amassed more. (For the sake of perspective, it's only fair to point out that Jay-Z's entire career is in the SoundScan era, when there's been more rapid turnover at #1. This allows more albums to reach the top spot. Jay-Z has had only two albums that made the Top 5 but failed to reach #1, while the Rolling Stones have had 21 such albums-in addition to their nine albums that went all the way. If there had been point-of-sale tracking in the Stones' heyday, presumably several of their albums that peaked in runner-up slots would have had a turn on top. The same is true of such other veteran acts as Barbra Streisand, who has had eight #1 albums-and 10 more that made the Top 5 but stopped short of #1.)

American Gangster opens with sales of 425,000 copies, which is a little off for Jay-Z. Six of his nine previous #1 albums opened with larger tallies. He achieved his biggest opening week one year ago when Kingdom Come started with sales of 690,000.

The official line is that Jay-Z's album was "inspired by" the new Ridley Scott movie of the same name, which stars Denzel Washington as a 1970s Harlem drug lord and Russell Crowe as the cop trying to take him down. The movie has grossed $80.6 million in domestic receipts in its first two weeks.

But the truth is much more interesting: Jay-Z hoped to write the song score for the film. But Brian Grazer, the film's producer, wanted the music to be songs from the era depicted in the film, which focuses on the years 1968-1975. Washington lobbied for Jay-Z to get the gig, but Grazer held firm.

The soundtrack, which includes both period R&B classics by Sam & Dave and the Staple Singers and out-of-period rap hits like Public Enemy's "Can't Truss It"-opens at #36 this week, with sales of 21,000. So does this mean Grazer made the wrong call? Not necessarily. His priority was the film, not achieving a smash soundtrack album. And while a chart-topping soundtrack can certainly help a film, a producer can't let the soundtrack take precedence. That would be letting the tail wag the dog. (In a unique move that feels a little like a peace offering to Jay-Z, advertisements for the film plug both the soundtrack album and Jay-Z's album.)

This isn't the first time that there have been competing albums from one film. In 1989, Danny Elfman composed the score for "Batman," while Prince had a #1 single with the song "Batdance." Warner Bros. marketed Elfman's music as the "original motion picture score" and a collection of nine Prince songs as the "motion picture soundtrack."

The Eagles' Long Road Out Of Eden slips to #2, with sales of 359,000. This pushes its total sales to 1,070,000 after two weeks. That's more than twice as many copies as the group's last major release, 1994's mostly live Hell Freezes Over, had sold at the same point. Much has already been made, including in this space, about the veteran group's debut last week with 711,000 copies. I'll add just one new wrinkle: The vast majority of albums that open with eye-popping sales totals are by artists that have been prominent for 10 years or less-hot, "current" acts, at the peak of their popularity. The Eagles are only the second act with 30 years under their belts to achieve such a lofty opening-week number. The first? The Beatles, who opened with sales of 855,000 with their 1995 retrospective, Anthology 1.

Garth Brooks' The Ultimate Hits enters at #3 with sales of 352,000. Brooks's original The Hits album in 1994 also opened at #3, though with a higher sales tally (520,000). The Ultimate Hits contains all 18 tracks that appeared on The Hits as well as 16 additional tracks, including four that are previously-unreleased. The two-CD set also contains a DVD which features videos for 33 of the tracks. (Long Road Out Of Eden is also a two-CD set, giving super-sized packages two of the top three spots.)

Brooks is a shrewd and clever marketing man-too much so for his own good. Like Michael Jackson, whom he dethroned as the king of the album charts in the early ‘90s, he is all too aware of his statistical achievements; too enamored with setting new records. This is why, many believe, he keeps repackaging his old hits. In addition to The Hits and The Ultimate Hits, Brooks revisited his greatest hits on the 1998 Double Live album and repackaged entire albums on two, non-overlapping boxed sets, both dubbed (confusingly!) The Limited Series. Brooks should focus less on trying to come up with new ways to repackage "Friends In Low Places" and "The Dance" and more on coming up with new songs of that caliber.

Chris Brown's second album, Exclusive, debuts at #4, with sales of 294,000. Brown's eponymous debut debuted (and peaked) at #2 in December 2005, on opening-week sales of 154,000. Brown's "Kiss, Kiss" is the current #1 single. Brown, 18, is not the youngest artist in this week's Top 10. Taylor Swift, who is just 17, jumps from #26 to #8 with her eponymous debut album. Swift won the Horizon Award at the recent Country Music Assn. Awards.

Carrie Underwood's "Carnival Ride," which debuted two weeks ago at #1, slips from #3 to #5; Josh Groban's holiday album Noel jumps from #8 to #6; and Britney Spears' Blackout drops from #2 to #7.

Angels & Airwaves' second album, I-Empire, opens at #9. The alternative band's debut, We Don't Need To Whisper, opened (and peaked) at #4 in June 2006.  The band includes Tom DeLong, also a member of Blink-182, and Atom Willard, a former member of the Offspring.

Cassidy's third album, B.A.R.S. The Barry Adrian Reese Story, opens at #10. It's the rapper's first album since he served eight months in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the June 2005 shooting death of 22-year old Desmond Hawkins. In an earlier, gentler time, such a turn of events might have derailed a promising career. These days, it serves to give artists "street cred."

All three of Cassidy's albums have reached the top 10. Split Personality debuted (and peaked) at #2 in 2004. I'm A Hustla debuted (and peaked) at #5 the following year. Barry Adrian Reese is Cassidy's real name. Many previous rap album titles have featured the artist's real names. Among them: Jay-Z's Vol. 3...Life And Times Of S. Carter, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP and LL Cool J's G.O.A.T. Featuring James T. Smith The Greatest Of All Time.

This is the third week in a row that six albums move into the top 10. It's the first time in more than a year that six albums have entered the top 10 three weeks running. So what becomes of the six albums that fall out to make way for this week's new arrivals? Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss drops from #6 to #16, Rascal Flatts' Still Feels Good falls from #10 to #17, Andrea Bocelli's The Best Of Andrea Bocelli-Vivere drops from #9 to #18, Josh Turner's Everything Is Fine crashes from #5 to #19, Avenged Sevenfold's eponymous album nosedives from #4 to #29, and the Backstreet Boys' Unbreakable plummets from #7 to #40. The Backstreet Boys' album has sold just over 100,000 copies after two weeks in release, less, probably, than their peak-period albums sold in their first two hours.  I think we can call these 100,000 buyers "hard-core fans."

It won't be easy for Jay-Z to hold at #1 next week. Only three of his previous nine #1 albums managed a second week on top. And, as ever, there will be fresh competition. The week's key releases include Alicia Keys' As I Am, Celine Dion's Taking Chances, Led Zeppelin's Mothership, Seal's System and the compilations Now 26 and Now Party Hits.