Blog Posts by Paul Grein

John Mayer has a lot to be thankful for this week. He can be glad that his new album Battle Studies debuts at #1 with a healthy sales total (286,000 copies). And he can especially be thankful that that the album didn't go head-to-head with Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream, which is expected to debut at #1 next week with first-week sales in the range of 600,000 copies. It could top Eminem's Relapse for the biggest sales week by any album in 2009. Relapse opened with sales of 608,000 in May.

Battle Studies is Mayer's third consecutive studio album to debut in the top two with first-week sales of 275,000 or more. Heavier Things bowed at #1 in September 2003 with sales of 317,000. Continuum debuted (and peaked) at #2 in September 2006 with sales of 300,000.

It's getting harder for even big stars to maintain past sales levels, as we see this week with disappointing first-week sales numbers by Norah Jones and 50 Cent. Jones' The Fall opens at #3 with first-week sales of 180,000, less than

Bon Jovi lands its second straight #1 album with The Circle. The band also debuted at #1 in June 2007 with Lost Highway. This is the second time that Bon Jovi has had back-to-back #1 albums. It also topped The Billboard 200 in the late '80s with the back-to-back blockbusters Slippery When Wet and New Jersey. Bon Jovi became superstars in the heyday of "hair bands," which was roughly 1984 to 1991. Most of these acts fell out of favor long ago, but Bon Jovi just keeps on chugging. The Circle is the band's 10th top 10 album (not counting a 1990 solo album by Jon Bon Jovi).

Other acts that transcended the "hair band" era include Motley Crue, which debuted at #4 with last year's Saints Of Los Angeles, and Van Halen, which hit #3 with a 2004 greatest hits set, The Best Of Both Worlds.

The list of acts that didn't sustain for long includes Quiet Riot, which never returned to the top 10 after its 1983 debut Metal Health hit  #1; Twisted Sister, which never returned to the top 40 after 1984's

The Twilight Saga: New Moon was #1 at the box-office over the weekend, three weeks after its soundtrack album reached #1 on The Billboard 200. New Moon is the 23rd movie in the past 28 years to top the weekend box-office listings and also spawn a chart-topping soundtrack.

It's hard enough to reach #1 in just one of these arenas. To top both charts is a remarkable achievement (as evidenced by the fact that it happens, on average, less than once a year.)

The movie/soundtrack tie-in goes through hot and cold spells. We're definitely in an upswing. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is the fourth movie in a year to hit #1 at the box-office and generate a #1 soundtrack. It follows Michael Jackson's This Is It, Hannah Montana: The Movie and the first Twilight. This matches the frenetic pace from July 1997 to July 1998 when Men In Black, Titanic, City Of Angels and Armageddon all hit #1 at the box-office and spawned chart-topping soundtracks.

The weekend box-office charts, dating back to January

Billboard has seen the light. Starting in two weeks, the magazine's flagship The Billboard 200 album chart will include older "catalog" albums. The move was prompted by Michael Jackson's phenomenal success this year, little of which was reflected on The Billboard 200. Jackson's Number Ones was the best-selling album in the country for six weeks this summer, but because the 2003 release was a catalog album, it wasn't allowed to appear on the big chart.

"The events of 2009, and the continuing creativity in the repackaging of catalog titles, have led us to conclude that the Billboard 200 would be best served presenting the true best-sellers in the country, without any catalog-related rules or stipulations, to our readers, the media and music fans" said Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard's director of charts.

Starting in two weeks, the magazine will base The Billboard 200 on Nielsen/SoundScan's Top Comprehensive Albums chart (which includes both current and catalog titles) instead of the Top

Carrie Underwood's Play On sold 318,000 copies last week, the biggest weekly sales tally for an album by a female artist so far in 2009. It's the biggest weekly sales tally for a country album since Rascal Flatts' Unstoppable started with sales of 351,000 in April. This ought to give Underwood a little extra confidence when she co-hosts tonight's Country Music Assn. Awards telecast with Brad Paisley.

Play On is Underwood's second album in a row to enter The Billboard 200 at #1. Carnival Ride debuted in the top spot in October 2007. The singer's debut album, Some Hearts, debuted (and peaked) at #2 in November 2005. All three of Underwood's albums have posted first-week sales of 315,000 or higher, which shows that she has a large and steady fan base.

Underwood this week becomes the second American Idol alum to top the 10 million mark in career album sales. Underwood, the show's Season 4 winner, has sold 10,168,000 albums, second only to Kelly Clarkson, the Season 1 champ, who has sold

The odds are four out of five that history will be made when the Entertainer of the Year is announced at the Country Music Assn. Awards on Wednesday.

Kenny Chesney would become the first five-time winner in the history of the category-and the first act ever to win four years in a row.

Taylor Swift, 19, would become the youngest Entertainer of the Year winner ever-and the first female solo artist to win in this decade.

George Strait, 57, would become the oldest winner ever--and the act with the longest span of wins (20 years).

Keith Urban, who was born in New Zealand, would become the first person born outside of the U.S. to take the award twice.

The fifth nominee is Brad Paisley, who is co-hosting the annual CMA Awards telecast with Carrie Underwood. It would be Paisley's first win in the category, though he wouldn't establish any key records.

A total of 28 acts have walked off with the Entertainer of the Year award since the first CMA Awards in 1967. Twenty of them have been male solo

Michael Jackson's Michael Jackson's This Is It enters The Billboard 200 at #1, with first-week sales of 373,000 copies. This is the biggest weekly sales tally for a Jackson album since HIStory: Past, Present And Future-Book I rang up first-week sales of 391,000 in June 1995. This Is It outpaced the impressive tallies that Number Ones rang up in the weeks after Jackson's death. That greatest hits set posted sales of 339,000 and 349,000 in the first two weeks of July. So, Jackson is still setting records: No other artist has topped the 300,000 weekly sales mark twice this year, much less three times.

Jackson is the first artist to top The Billboard 200 posthumously since The Notorious B.I.G., who scored in March 2007 with Greatest Hits. This Is It posted the biggest posthumous weekly sales tally since an earlier Biggie album, Duets: The Final Chapter, which sold 438,000 copies in one week in December 2005.

This Is It reaches #1 by displacing another theatrical movie soundtrack, The

The Twilight Saga: New Moon soundtrack jumps to #1 this week, even though the movie, which stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, won't hit theaters until Nov. 20. The album, which features such acts as Death Cab for Cutie, Muse and the Killers, is the 20throck-oriented soundtrack to top The Billboard 200.

The first Twilight soundtrack topped the chart last fall. As I pointed out in Chart Watch on Wednesday, this marks the first time that the soundtracks to a theatrically-released movie and its sequel have both reached #1.

To commemorate these achievements, I have prepared a list of the 20 rock soundtracks that have topped The Billboard 200. Elvis Presley and The Beatles each reached #1 with four soundtracks. Prince & the Revolution, Los Lobos and U2 have also had chart-topping soundtracks.

To deepen the list, I defined "rock" in a broad sense. Some of these soundtracks could be classified as pop (Wayne's World), R&B (Purple Rain) or alternative (City Of Angels, Juno) but all they