First! What a terribly boring week for music. SPIN cover girls Tegan & Sara have disappeared from view along with wizened soul man Charlie Wilson (see last week’s Who Charted?) and the world at large chose to ignore My Bloody Valentine’s long-awaited comeback m b v despite us slapping an Essential sticker on that 20-odd-dollar CD. So a big whopping M-E-H to you, America, for giving gee-golly-Josh Groban the No. 1 seat in the land for his All That Echoes album (145K, says Billboard). Turns out the adult contemporary king is one of the most successful male solo vocalists in Nielsen SoundScan history, so why don’t we all just quit caring about things like Mikky Ekko, Flatbush Zombies and Frank Ocean, okay? Ugh.
2 to 10: Really, you should stop reading now. You aren’t going to be happy. Because Tim McGraw is in at No. 2 for Two Lanes of Freedom (107K). Hell, Tim, why not four lanes? This is your Amurika, after all. And then Now 45 comes in at No. 3 (87K) — it seems reports of the godawful series’ demise were greatly exaggerated. No. 4 belongs to Mumford and Sons’ Babel (54K), which is expected to benefit next week as well from the Grammys travesty. Same with their ‘cross-the-pond cousins the Lumineers, skirting obscurity at No. 10 for their self-titled and suspendered stinker (39K). No. 5 goes to Andrea Bocelli’s Passione (51K) and No. 6 to Justin Bieber’s Believe Acoustic (43K), which lost 79 percent of its first-week sales despite his Saturday Night Live hosting stint not being the worst we’ve seen. Something called Red that isn’t a Taylor Swift album made its own album called Release the Panic (No. 7, 41K). Bruno Mars’ Unorthodox Jukebox (41K) stays in the mix at No. 8. And Coheed and Cambria scored No. 9 for The Afterman: Descension (41K). You’ve been progrolled!
Rise Up, Boys: Patrick Stump and the rest of Fall Out Boy have reunited, given themselves a makeover and launched a new long-titled single, “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” and the gamble was worth it. Over on the Digital Songs chart, the fiery song debuts at No. 3, having moved 162K units in week one.
Mackle(no)more: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” is on top of the Hot 100 for the fourth week. It’s sold over three million copies to date. It makes us feel like doing this:
