First! Rejoice, Christmas is only four days away, meaning the end of Michael Bublé’s chokehold on the Billboard 200 is almost upon us. For the fourth straight week, the crooner’s obviously titled Christmas captured the No. 1 spot, tallying up another 448,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. By the time you read this, Bublé’s seasonal album — which he promoted on SNL this past weekend — has already crossed the two million copies sold threshold, putting him in line to surpass Lady Gaga’s double-platinum Born This Way by New Year’s Eve.
2 Through 10: Adele’s 21 remains cemented in the Top 5 its 43rd week on the charts, selling another 288,000 last-minute stocking-stuffer copies to push its 2011 total past 5 million copies. There were no strangers in the Top 10 as pretty much everyone who was there last week returned. Justin Bieber’s Under the Mistletoe jumped up one spot to No. 3 and the Black Keys’ El Camino showed some impressive resilience by only dropping from No. 2 last week to No. 4 (85,000). In its second week on the charts, Amy Winehouse’s posthumous Lioness: Hidden Treasures fell from No. 5 to No. 10 (65,000). You guys don’t care where Andrea Bocelli and Scotty McCreery landed, so let’s move on.
Notable New Arrivals: There weren’t any debuts in the Top 10, but Anthony Hamilton’s Back to Love came the closest, finishing 2,000 copies shy of Winehouse’s total to settle for No. 12.
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Surprisingly Weak New Arrivals: Let’s use this section to poke fun at Lulu one last time. Metallica’s four-song digital EP Beyond Magnetic, comprised of outtakes from the Death Magnetic sessions, was downloaded 36,000 times to enter the charts at No. 32. How did Loutallica’s Lulu fare when it was released on Halloween? No. 36 and 13,000 copies in its first week.
We Found Love at the Top of the Hot 100 Rihanna and Calvin Harris’ smash single topped the Hot 100 for the eighth time, making it the most Hot 100-dominating track of RiRi’s career and the longest residing No. 1 song of 2011, edging out even Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” Adele’s single only managed to top the Hot 100 for seven weeks.
