People Still Buy Music: Van Halen debuts strong but doesn't prevent Adele from scoring 20th week at No. 1
Van Halen's first album in 14 years debuted strong this week, selling 187,000 copies after garnering generally positive reviews. But A Different Kind Of Truth was no match for the same old truth of the Billboard albums chart: Adele's 21 cannot be killed. In fact, in the lead up to the Grammys, it only gained strength, nearly doubling its sales from the previous week with 237,000. 21 has now spent 20 weeks at No. 1, the longest run since The Bodyguard soundtrack in 1992-93. And now that 21 is due for a post-Grammys sales push, it's likely that Adele will sail easily to 21 weeks at No. 1 and beyond. Even her 2008 debut, 19, re-entered the Top 10 to land at No. 9 with 36,000 sold.
Also re-entering the charts for obvious reasons is Whitney: The Greatest Hits, which comes in at No. 6 with sales of 64,000 (an increase of 10,419 percent over the previous week). In all, six Whitney Houston albums entered the chart in the wake of her death.
After Van Halen, the other debuts this week are The Fray, who land at No. 4 with 87,000—less than half what the group's previous record, The Fray, sold in its first week—and Paul McCartney, whose easy-listening standards set Kisses On The Bottom premieres at No. 5 with 74,000. Country singer Dierks Bentley also debuted this week, landing at No. 7 with 55,000 sold of his new LP, Home.
The rest of the Top 10 includes: Now 41 (No. 3, 142,000), the 2012 Grammy Nominees compilation (No. 8, 51,000), and Drake's Take Care (No. 10, 32,000). [via Billboard]