First! One Direction earn their name by selling more records total with each album dropped. Midnight Memories sold 546,000 on its debut week, which of course makes it No. 1 on the Billboard 200. What’s more, this bookend in the English-Irish boy band’s high-concept trilogy — following 2011’s Up All Night and 2012’s Take Me Home — is their third chart-topper in a row, which gives 1D the distinction of being the first group in history to have their first three LPs start at the top. And since last year’s did 540K upon release, they are now the third pop posse ever to have more than one 500K+ sales week. Their predecessors: Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, who’ve notched that accomplishment nine and seven times, respectively. There’s no use fighting it: One Direction are here to stay.
2 to 10: That massive debut pushes Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2 down to No. 2, but thanks to Black Friday deals, the man’s vocally acrobatic new set saw a sizable 65 percent sales bump in its fourth week, moving 199K. The only other top 10 debut this week comes from Garth Brooks and it’s a doozy. Blame It All on My Roots is a Walmart-exclusive six-CD/two-DVD box that started with a sale price of $24.96 on Thanksgiving. In four days, it moved 164K units. Now, the repeats: Duck the Halls: A Robertson Family Christmas stayed at No. 4 (137K); Katy Perry’s Prism returned from the sidelines to No. 5 (136K); Kelly Clarkson’s holiday set Wrapped in Red ascended to No. 6 (131K); Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP rose a rung to No. 7 (116K) with help from the Muppets; Luke Bryan’s unstoppable Crash My Party leaps from No. 15 to No. 8 (109K); Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz bounds just as many slots to No. 9 (79K), and the Now 48 comp closes us out (77K).
To find out where these albums rank with SPIN, check out our 50 Best Albums of 2013.
Turkey Perks: The percentage gains in this week’s top 10 were bananas — er, cranberries — due to price-slashing. Bryan’s album sold 318 percent more during the holiday week than it did across the previous seven days. Prism picked up 252 percent, and Bangerz rose by 228 percent. In fact, only four albums in the entire top 75 posted losses. The first of that batch is found all the ay down at No. 23: last week’s No. 6, Daughtry’s Baptized, which fell a nasty 35 percent.
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Big Ballin: Improbably, Miley’s “Wrecking Ball” swings back to the top of the Hot 100, knocking Lorde off of the throne, which she held for nine weeks. The reason? A naked comedian by the name of Stephen Kardynal, who released a parody video of himself lip-syncing the song while riding nude on a giant ball. Best of all, he performed the thing on Chatroulette, and captured all of the reactions. The YouTube clip is approaching 69M views. See here:
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