cungar

Did America just wake up out of it's shit music haze?




Dylan Earns First No. 1 Album Since 1976

Bob Dylan


September 06, 2006, 11:15 AM ET

Katie Hasty, N.Y.
For the first time in 30 years, Bob Dylan tops The Billboard 200 with "Modern Times." Not only is it the legendary songwriter's first album to reach the throne since "Desire" in 1976, it's also his highest debuting album and his best sales week since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking data in 1991. The Columbia set moved 192,000 copies in the United States in its first week.

"Modern Times" is Dylan's third consecutive top 10 studio set, following 1997's "Time Out of Mind" and 2001's "Love & Theft." Aside from "Desire" and "Modern Times," only two other Dylan albums assumed the plateau on the chart: 1974's "Planet Waves" and the 1975 classic "Blood on the Tracks."

After crowning The Billboard 200 last week, Danity Kane slips to No. 2 with 117,000 copies, a sales hit of 50%.

Young Dro's major label debut, "Best Thang Smokin'," bows at No. 3 with 104,000. With help from his smash hit "Shoulder Lean" (featuring T.I.), the Grand Hustle/Atlantic release also overtakes OutKast's soundtrack to "Idlewild" (LaFace) at No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

Christina Aguilera's RCA album "Back to Basics" slips 3-4 on the big chart with 101,000, a sales decline of 25%. Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" (Epic) enters the chart at No. 5, selling only a couple hundred albums fewer than "Back to Basics" with 101,000. Her last album, 2003's "In This Skin," originally peaked at No. 10 but hit No. 2 after a 2004 re-release.


The Disney soundtrack to "The Cheetah Girls 2" falls 5-6 with 80,000 (-1%) while "Idlewild" also slips, moving 2-7 with 78,000 (-60%).

Method Man scores his fifth consecutive top 10 debut, as "4:21 ... The Day After" (Def Jam) lands at No. 8 with 62,000 units. Another Def Jam effort follows at No. 9 in the form of the Roots' "Game Theory," which moved 61,000.

In its 48th week on the chart, Nickelback's "All the Right Reasons" (Roadrunner) re-enters the top tier, moving 12-10 with 60,000.

Other big debuts this week include Too Short's Jive release "Blow the Whistle" (No. 14, 40,000), Ray Lamontagne's sophomore RCA set, "Till the Sun Turns Black" (No. 28, 28,000), Crossfade's sophomore Columbia effort, "Falling Away" (No. 30, 28,000) and Hatebreed's first Roadrunner album, "Supremacy" (No. 31, 27,000).

The Toby Keith-led "Broken Bridges" soundtrack, released on his Show Dog label, opens at No. 36, followed by the Atlantic debut of reggaeton star Tego Calderon, "The Underdog/El Subestimado," at No. 43. Singer/songwriter Pete Yorn bows at a disappointing No. 50 with the Columbia album "Nightcrawler"; its predecessor, 2003's "Day I Forgot," debuted at No. 18.

Indie veteran M. Ward makes his Billboard 200 debut with the Merge album "Post-War" at No. 146. The set opened last week at No. 21 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart but enjoyed a 100% sales increase in its second week at nearly 5,800 copies.

At 9.39 million units, overall CD sales are down 1.5% from last week's count and down 10% compared to the same week a year ago. Sales for 2006 are down 6% compared to 2005 at 354 million units.

DVD Josh

Rejoice. I haven't heard the album, but I would take Bob over Simple J any day of the week.

moorehed

How much does this have to do with old people not named my dad not knowing how to download albums?

Davy Mack

That's pretty funny!

PopcornTreeCt

And I thought this was gonna be about Dylan declining to do a duet with Jessica.

astrochimp

Modern Times is a great record and probably tied with Pearl Jam for my favorites of 2006 so nice to see it debut well

Jason

So when Dylan's album drops on the charts and is replaced by some pop artist, does than mean he's no longer relevant?

milo bloom

It's bound to happen sooner or later simply because that's how the business works. But the fact is he managed to hit #1 after all these years. I think it's a good sign personally.

Michael Corvin

Not a fan of Dylan but that is awesome. Long live rawk!

redhenry

Chart placings are a bad indication of what is selling, certainly here in Australia anyway. Positions are based (Solely, largely??) on orders placed by retailers. We have had many number one artists that have debuted No.1 in the first week, gone triple platinum blah blah yet in reality barely sold enough to go gold and would be lucky to crack the Top 20. The record companies either buy back the excess stock or retailers flog it off in the bargain bins pretty quickly or just watch the stock move very slowly.

All a No. 1 hit might mean that there was plenty of 'expectation' of big sales. Sure, some artists manage to actually sell lots too and get decent chart positions but it is no guarantee that all the copies are flying off the shelf.

Lateralus

While I'm not a big fan of Dylan I like it when "real" artists make it to #1. However with most "real" artists their loyal fans buy the album the first week, then after the album drops like a rock. Yes it is cool Dylan is #1, but in a month he will be nowhere to be see but Ms. Simpson will be still in the top 10.

Brent L

Anad I thought this was gonna be about Dylan declining...something else, with Jessica.

fiver

I don't think there's anything particularly innovative or new about 'Modern Times' but I do think it's a pretty enjoyable listen. Up until a couple years ago when I received the sacd-hybrid dylan set as a gift, I never liked Dylan's songs (because of his voice) but I always recognized his influence on the arena of rock and folk. I think it's terrific (and highly unusual) for an artist that's been making music so long to hit the charts like this...usually those slots are reserved for the latest and greatest flash-in-the-pan hitmakers.

Still don't understand why Dylan is an 'opportunistic hack'...perhaps 'opinions' treated as facts would be given greater lattitude on this board if they were actually backed up with facts and evidence....things that make you go 'huh'

Michael

Daytripper

And I thought this was a Ricki Lake episode.

Whoever said Simpson's album will remain in the Top 10 for a while, I disagree. I think it'll be gone in two weeks. Maybe even next week. Sure, the album will go Gold or Platinum, but unless she has a strong second or third single off of it, it won't return there. The first single only peaked at #14. I think people are growing tired of her. She's way too overexposed. And the doofus routine has gotten beyond old.

Richard Malloy

I've read the first volume of "Chronicles". Unfortunately for uwftke26, it was quite a big seller - in other words, I'm not the only one reading his gloss and wondering which chapter he thinks he's culling from.

Dylan's views on the new left and the folk revivalist movement are, of course, very well-known from other sources... and only glancingly touched upon in "Chronicles", which, despite what you might think, only somewhat details his early 60s-era career - though with a vivid depiction of Greenwich Village at that time - and then goes on to discuss his early-70s "crappy" albums, his 90s work with Lanois on "TooM" a good deal about New Orleans and a fascinating gent named Sun Pie, and finally a brief return to the early 60s to close things out. It's a great read that fleshes out many of his early influences, his constant desire for reinvention, his delving into Civil War era texts for the lexiconagraphy, etc. etc.

It's hard to know for sure what uwftke26 is thinking - Dylan's view of the "radical movement" is quite harsh, but to "boil it down to crass commercialism" is such a reductive gloss on his views as to render it a false representation. Certainly, he was disgusted by those elements in the music biz, and his desire to alienate the "movement folks" with each successive album, to escape from the "protest singer" box they attempted to place him in, and ultimately to render them irrelevant is well-known... again, from other sources. In "Chronicles: 1", Dylan does reveal himself as an admirer of Barry Goldwater, which alone gives you a better insight into his thoughts at the time than uwftke26's piffle.

DrRingDing

I'll say it again since it's no longer attached to this thread:

Maybe I'm forgetting, but I'm fairly certain he talked about the making of Oh Mercy and not Time Out of Mind...

Or, at least, so my admittedly bad memory tells me.
-ringding-

Andalusia

No, your memory's spot-on. A good portion of the book deals with "Oh Mercy". Anybody have an idea when volume two of Chronicles is ever going to hit?

Cameron

ipod commercial got people to listen i think

Tommy Ceez

Thats insane

Bugg

I think you are wrong.

Sure it's not the only reason the album is selling well, but exposure in ads helps a lot these days. Radio stations have become next to useless for anything outside of Top 40, and MTV no longer plays a lot of music. I'll bet anything that more people have heard the last few U2 songs in those Ipod TV ads, than on the radio or MTV. I've read a few articles over the last couple of years, that seemed to reach the conclussion that many artists no longer view lending their music or image to commercials as selling out, but now view it as great way to reach people that otherwise might not be exposed to their more recent music.

It's almost like the product is selling the artist, more than the artist is selling the product.

cungar

I agree. I think it had a huge amount to do with first week sales. Take a look at the number one seller for Dylan on itunes. It's Someday Baby. People certainly didn't hear that on the radio.

Great ad by the way.