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Who Charted? Jack White Blunderbusses Into First No. 1

Jack White / Photo by Jo McCaughey

First! Going solo was the best thing Jack White’s ever done… for his business, anyway. He finally dominates the Billboard 200 for the first time in his 15-year career with Blunderbuss, which sold 138,000 copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. White Stripes, Dead Weather and Raconteurs records have only gotten him into the top 10, albeit seven times. He was, no doubt, helped out by his livestreamed, Gary Oldman-directed New York show last weekend that showed everyone how fierce this new material really is

2 Through 10: Adele only suffers a 6 percent dip and hits No. 2 with 84,000 copies, while Lionel Richie (Tuskegee with 78,000), One Direction (Up All Night with 50,000), and country singer Lee Brice (his sophomore record Hard 2 Love debuts with 46,000) round out the top 5. No. 6 belongs to another country dude, Kip Moore, whose debut record unfortunately shares One Direction’s album title Up All Night and sold 37,000 copies. No. 7 belongs to everybody’s (second-) favorite boy band the Wanted, whose self-titled U.S. debut rakes in only 34,000 (more on how weird that is below). No. 8 belongs to Nicki Minaj’s Roman Reloaded (32,000), at which our rap blogger Brandon Soderberg took a second look today, on the occasion of its one-month anniversary. Nos. 9 and 10 are Gotye’s Making Mirrors (32,000) and Jason Mraz’s Love is a Four Letter Word, the latter of which took a painful 71 percent nosedive (following its No. 2 debut last week) into just 29,000 copies (from 102,000 last week).

Wanted Worldwide: The Wanted’s weirdly low-selling stateside debut is kind of complicated. They only sold 34,000 copies of this self-titled record, which is essentially just a collection of singles from their two previous studio albums (released in 2010 and 2011), but those two records only got U.K./international releases, while this is the first official U.S. release. They’ve slated a worldwide album for sometime in 2013.

Steady as She Goes: This week’s industry-wide album sales (5.41 million) are almost identical to those of the same week in 2011 (5.38 million) — at least, those tracked by Nielsen Soundscan — and overall, the year to date has been just barely worse: while last year sales at this point in the year were at 101.9 million, this year’s are at 101 million. So overall, not too shabby, people!