American Idol scores big on pop charts

ArtsBeat reports: On the music charts, this has been a good week for American Idol.

Scotty McCreery, who won this year’s competition, has opened at No. 1 on the latest Billboard chart with his first album, Clear as Day, and reached a slew of sales milestones.

Clear as Day, which sold 197,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, had the biggest opening week in three years for an Idol winner’s first album, and it is also the first debut by an Idol champion to open at No. 1 since Ruben Studdard’s Soulful in 2003. [Ed. note: proving yet again how weird America's taste for music can be].

If that were not enough, Mr. McCreery, who turned 18 on Sunday, is also the first country act to open at No. 1 with a debut, as well as is the youngest man to have his first album start in the top slot, Billboard reported.

Also this week, Adele’s unstoppable 21 is No. 2 on the album chart with 112,000 sales, and her recent single, "Someone Like You,” remains the No. 1 digital song, with 218,000 downloads. The No. 2 spot on the digital songs chart is also unchanged from last week: Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger,” featuring Christina Aguilera, had 186,000 downloads.

Tony Bennett’s Duets II is the No. 3 album this week with 71,000. And besides Mr. McCreery’s album, the new titles in this week’s Top 10 include Feist’s Metals, at No. 7 with 38,000; Take a Back Road, the fourth album by the country singer Rodney Atkins, at No. 8 with 35,000; and People and Things by the band Jack’s Mannequin, which bowed at No. 9 with 31,000.

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