There are three groups in the top five on this week's Billboard 200, but only one of them is real. That would be Foo Fighters, whose latest album, Wasting Light, dips to #3 after debuting at #1 last week. The two made-for-TV groups in the top five are the Warblers, from the hit Fox series Glee, and Lemonade Mouth, from the Disney Channel movie of the same name.
Glee: The Music Presents The Warblers, which debuts at #2, features series regulars Chris Colfer and Darren Criss fronting the Tufts University Beelzebubs. The lead-off track is Criss' star-making rendition of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream." The remake, which has sold 481K digital copies, was also featured on Glee: Volume 4.
Lemonade Mouth, which jumps from #18 to #4 in its second week, features such Disney Channel stars as Bridgit Mendler, Naomi Scott, Hayley Kiyoko, and Blake Michael. The movie focuses on five high school students who meet in detention and decide to form a band. (I guess they didn't want to call it The Breakfast Club: The Musical.) Six songs from the album are featured on Hot Digital Songs.
Both fictional groups outsold two real groups that are listed in this week's top 10: Alison Krauss & Union Station and Mumford & Sons.
Made-for-TV groups have been with us since the days of the Monkees and the Partridge Family, both of which sold millions of records. Lemonade Mouth, which played to 13.5 million viewers in its first two airings, joins a long line of Disney Channel movies to spawn hit soundtracks. It follows The Cheetah Girls, High School Musical, Jump In!, Camp Rock and Wizards Of Waverly Place.
Glee Presents The Warblers is the 10th consecutive Glee album or EP to debut in the top 10. The album sold 86K in its first week. Of the 10 Glee albums or EPs, only Rocky Horror (which bowed with sales of 48K) had a slimmer first week. There may be, after so many titles in such a concentrated period, some Glee fatigue.
That said, Glee has spawned more top 10 albums than any other TV show in history. Four TV series are tied for second place, with five top 10 albums each: Sing Along With Mitch (the tally just counts albums released during the run of the show), The Monkees, American Idol (not counting albums by individual contestants) and Hannah Montana (not counting the movie soundtrack or strictly solo albums by star Miley Cyrus).
The seven full-length Glee albums and three EPs have sold a combined total of 5,387,000 copies in the U.S. The best-selling Glee album was the first, which has sold 1,163,000 copies. Next in line: the Glee Christmas album, which has sold 925K. The poorest seller of the first nine releases is the aforementioned Rocky Horror EP, which has sold 160K copies.
Adele's 21 returns to #1 for a fifth week. It's the longest-running #1 album since Taylor Swift's Speak Now had six weeks on top from October into January. It's the longest-running #1 album by a British artist since Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream had six weeks on top in late 2009.
21 has never ranked below #3. It's the first album to spend its first nine weeks in the top three since Eminem's Recovery, which spent its first 13 weeks in the top three last year.
A pair of cover versions on TV's hottest music shows boosted Adele's album. Haley Reinhart performed "Rolling in the Deep" on American Idol. Gwyneth Paltrow sang "Turning Tables" on Glee.
21 sold 65K digital copies this week, which allowed it to return to #1 on Top Digital Albums. The album has sold 592K digital copies to date, which puts it at #8 on the all-time list of digital albums.
Adele heads three key year-to-date charts. 21 is the best-selling album for the year-to-date, with sales of 1,275,000. (Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More is a distant second, with sales of 719K in this calendar year.) 21 is also the top-selling digital album, with sales of 592K (again, Sigh No More is second, with digital sales of 397K in this calendar year). And Adele's previous album, 19, is the year's top-selling catalog album, with sales of 162K in this calendar year. (The Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D. is second, with sales of 126K in this calendar year.)
21 also returns to #1 in the U.K. for a 12th week on top. This is the most weeks an album has been #1 in the U.K. since The Verve's Urban Hymns spent 12 weeks on top in 1997-1998. (That album spawned the international hit "Bitter Sweet Symphony.")
Adele appears to be the front-runner to win Album of the Year at next year's Grammy Awards. Another prime contender, Paul Simon's So Beautiful Or So What, drops from #4 to #8 in its second week. Simon has received seven nominations for Album of the Year-two with Simon & Garfunkel and five on his own.
(Only three other acts in Grammy history have amassed seven or more Album of the Year nominations over the course of their careers. Paul McCartney leads the pack with nine. Frank Sinatra and George Harrison have each gathered eight.)
"E.T." by Katy Perry featuring Kanye West returns to #1 on Hot Digital Songs for a sixth week. It's the longest that any hit has topped this chart since "Love The Way You Lie" by Eminem featuring Rihanna had seven weeks on top last summer. Will "E.T." also return to #1 on the Hot 100? You'll find out when we post Chart Watch: Songs later today.
Here's the low-down on this week's top 10 albums.
1. Adele, 21, 153,000. The album returns to #1 for a fifth week. (And it's likely to stay there for a sixth week.) Four songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Rolling In The Deep," which jumps from #5 to #2.
2. Glee Cast, Glee: The Music Presents The Warblers, 86,000. This new entry is the 10th Glee album to make the top 10. The cast's version of Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know" enters Hot Digital Songs at #119.
3. Foo Fighters, Wasting Light, 72,000. The former #1 album drops to #3 in its second week. "Rope" drops from #96 to #176 on Hot Digital Songs.
4. Various Artists, Lemonade Mouth soundtrack, 69,000. The album jumps from #18 to #4 in its second week. Six songs from the soundtrack are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Determinate," which jumps from #69 to #28.
5. Britney Spears, Femme Fatale, 45,000. The former #1 album rebounds from #6 to #5 in its fourth week. It has been in the top 10 the entire time. Two songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs. "Till The World Ends" drops from #10 to #12. "Hold It Against Me" drops from #86 to #113.
6. Alison Krauss & Union Station, Paper Airplane, 42,000. The album drops from #3 to #6 in its second week. It's #1 on the country chart for the second week.
7. Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More, 39,000. The album rebounds from #10 to #7 in its 57th week. This is its 15th week in the top 10. The album has sold 1,345,000 copies, more than any other in this week's top 10. Two songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs. "The Cave" drops from #57 to #60. "Little Lion Man" drops from #67 to #72.
8. Paul Simon, So Beautiful Or So What, 37,000. The album drops from #4 to #8 in its second week. The album has sold 106K copies in two weeks.
9. Chris Brown, F.A.M.E., 37,000. The former #1 album holds at #9 for the second week in its fifth week on the chart. It has been in the top 10 the entire time. Three songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by "Look At Me Now" (featuring Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes), which holds at #8 on Hot Digital Songs.
10. Justin Bieber, Never Say Never: The Remixes, 36,000. The former #1 album rebounds from #23 to #10 in its 10th week. This is its sixth week in the top 10. Two songs from the EP are listed on Hot Digital Songs. "Never Say Never" (featuring Jaden Smith) drops from #75 to #78. "That Should Be Me" jumps from #135 to #130.
Three albums drop out of the top 10 this week. Mana's Drama Y Luz drops from #5 to #21, Songs For Japan drops from #7 to #15 and Wiz Khalifa's Rolling Papers drops from #8 to #12.
Country Strong jumps from #26 to #23 in the wake of the release of the DVD. It's the top-ranking soundtrack to a theatrically-released movie for the eighth week. The album has sold 235K copies...Gorillaz's The Fall debuts at #24. The album was previously available to fan club members in digital form last Christmas. The album was recorded on an iPad during an October 2010 performance on the band's last tour.
Adele's 19 rebounds from #42 to #28. The album sold 18K copies this week, its biggest weekly tally since March 2009. The 2008 release holds at #1 on Top Catalog Albums for the ninth week. Only two other albums by female solo artists have topped the catalog chart this long in the past 20 years. Enya's Watermark was #1 for 17 weeks in 1992. Eva Cassidy's Songbird was #1 for nine weeks in 2001.
Rio was #1 at the box-office for the second straight weekend. The soundtrack enters the chart at #106. It features tracks by such hot acts as Jamie Foxx, will.i.am and Taio Cruz, as well as an update by Sergio Mendes of his 1966 classic "Mas Que Nada." The song first appeared on Mendes' breakthrough album, Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66.
The 25th anniversary edition of Les Miserables is the top-selling music video again this week.
R.I.P.: Phoebe Snow, whose debut album artfully blended elements of pop and jazz, died yesterday. She was 60. Phoebe Snow rose to #4 on The Billboard 200 in March 1975, largely on the strength of the beguiling "Poetry Man," which was a top five single on the Hot 100. Later that year, Snow teamed with Paul Simon (and the Jessy Dixon Singers) on the gospel-infused hit "Gone At Last." Snow was a Grammy finalist for Best New Artist of 1975.
Coming Attractions: No albums are going to take the chart by storm next week, but these five will probably debut in the top 100: The Airborne Toxic Event's All At Once, Emmylou Harris' Hard Bargain, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, Augustana's Augustana and Silverstein's Rescue.
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