by alicia11 » Nov 11th, '13, 13:15
UK Sales (loads of info here)
It is, as Joni Mitchell said on her classic song The River, "coming on Christmas" - and although album sales are sure to be down for the ninth year in a row, the usual end of year frenzy has started in earnest, with the entire top seven albums this week being debuts for the first time ever, with Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 predictably leading the way.
A week after notching his eighth number one single, Eminem scores his eighth number one album, debuting in pole position with The Marshall Mathers LP 2, which makes light work of not being released until Tuesday (5th), racking up 143,034 sales by close of business on Saturday. That's the third highest weekly artist album sale of the year to date, trailing only the 165,091 copies Daft Punk's Random Access Memories sold 24 weeks ago, and the 157,329 copies that Arctic Monkeys' AM sold eight weeks ago, when debuting at number one.
It is also higher than the 139,438 copies that its immediate predecessor, Recovery, sold when it opened at number one in June 2010 with a full week to make its mark. Eminem's 2009 album Relapse opened bigger, selling 166,952 copies on its opening week, which came after it had spun off five hit singles. Eminem also topped the chart solo with The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), The Eminem Show (2002), Encore (2004), the compilation Curtain Call – The Hits (2005), and as a member of D12 with D12 World. His 1999 debut album, The Slim Shady LP, is his only solo release not to reach number one, opening at number 12 and peaking at number 10. D12's first album, Devil's Night (2001) debuted and peaked at number two.
Curtain Call and Encore were both Friday releases, which racked up sales of 112,915 and 122,459 on chart debuts fuelled by two days sales. The Eminem Show provided Eminem’s best first week, selling 228,297 copies, while The Marshall Mathers LP opened with 63,052 sales and The Slim Shady LP's initial sale tally was just 10,270 copies. D12’s debut album Devil’s Night sold 57,967 on its first week, and follow-up D12 World opened with sales of 76,666.
Despite having the fastest start among Eminem solo albums, Relapse is his smallest seller, with a to-date tally of 512,911, compared to Recovery (879,303), The Slim Shady LP (976,141), Encore (1,185,985), The Eminem Show (1,599,790), Curtain Call - The Hits (1,616,434), and The Marshall Mathers LP (2,379,552). With D12 albums Devil's Night selling 421,980 copies and D12 World selling 313,028 copies, the new album's tally carries overall Eminem album sales in the UK to more than 10m, making him by far the biggest selling rapper. We should also note that 8 Mile - the soundtrack to Eminem's semi-autobiographical movie - was ineligible for the artist album chart as it featured tracks from several other artists including Nas, 50 Cent, Rakim and Macy Gray, but it topped the compilation chart and has so far sold 682,224 copies.
Eminem is the only artist to have eight number one albums in the 21st century, pulling clear of Westlife, who have had seven. Furthermore, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 is his seventh straight number one album, matching the run assembled by The Beatles between 1963 and 1966, and putting him one behind joint record-holders Led Zeppelin (1969-1979) and Abba (1976-1982), both of whom managed eight in a row