*NSYNC‘s unshakeable hold on the US continues as the boyband have scored the second biggest ever first-week sales of an album, moving 1.88 million copies of new record ‘CELEBRITY’.
Only the band’s ‘No Strings Attached’, released in March 2000, did better in its first week, selling 2.4 million.
‘Celebrity’ sold nearly ten times as many as the Billboard Chart (week ending August 11) Number Two selling artist Alicia Keys, whose ‘Songs In A Minor’ sold an otherwise impressive 202,000 copies. Such is *NSYNC‘s supremacy that they have sold more albums than every other act in the Top Ten combined.
However, *NSYNC‘s Justin Timberlake is sanguine about the success, and has blamed a slump in the US economy for a dip in first week sales. “All that stuff, we really don’t take it into consideration,” he told MTV. “We wanna stick around for longer than the first week.”
The only other new entry on the Ten is ‘Violator the Album: V2.0’, featuring various acts, including Busta Rhymes, at Number Ten.
The rest of the top 10 sees D12‘s ‘Devils Night’ at Three, Staind‘s ‘Break the Cycle’ at Four, Aaliyah at Five, Destiny’s Child ‘Survivor’ at Six, P Diddy‘s ‘The Saga Continues’ at Seven, Linkin Park‘s ‘Hybrid Theory’ at Eight and Jagged Edge’s ‘Jagged Little Thrill’ at Nine.
With little movement elsewhere, Cake have taken ‘Comfort Eagle’ in at 13 while veteran legendary singer/songwriter Neil Diamond debuted at 15 with ‘Three Chord Opera’, his first album in five years.