Over The Counter: Blige Leads Christmas Surge; Carey Passes 50 Cent

OK, so maybe dropping an album the week before Christmas is not such a bad idea after all, as evidenced by new Billboard 200 queen Mary J. Blige.

Once upon a time, conventional wisdom and my own unsolicited advice suggested that with stores busier than they are in any other week, it might be risky to get an album on shelves just days before Christmas. No worries this year, though, as Blige's "The Breakthrough" rallies by far her biggest Nielsen SoundScan week, while two other Dec. 20 releases also put up handsome numbers.

Blige rules with 727,000 copies, more than double her prior best SoundScan frame, while Jamie Foxx notches 597,500 and late rapper the Notorious B.I.G. adds another 438,000.

One could argue that this trio of new releases had more to do with the small rally in album sales during Christmas week than did the frame's extra shopping day (see story, page 5).

Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, rather than Saturday, as it did in 2004. But subtract the 1.7 million that these three albums sold, and volume for the 2005 holiday stanza would have trailed last year's peak week by 16%.

This is Blige's third No. 1 on the big chart and her seventh on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Her prior best SoundScan week had been 294,000 for "No More Drama" when it bowed at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 in 2001.

Her start is even more impressive when you consider there was little lead time for this album (see story, page 6). Geffen's original intention had been to drop a greatest-hits album with a few new songs during this fourth-quarter drive.

Blige and Foxx might have reached even larger numbers had stores not faced stock outages on both.

There are only four other solo female artists who have mounted larger SoundScan weeks. Britney Spears did so twice, with "Oops! . . . I Did It Again" starting at 1.3 million and "Britney" at 746,000. Norah Jones' sophomore set began with 1.02 million, Shania Twain's "Up!" launched with 874,000 and Mariah Carey's "Daydream" sold 760,000 during Christmas week of 1995. All of which leaves Blige with the largest debut week in SoundScan history for an R&B album by a solo female.



LEAPFROG: As suggested here in the last issue of 2005, Mariah Carey's "The Emancipation of Mimi" indeed overtakes 50 Cent's "The Massacre" as the best-selling album of calendar year 2005.

Her game of catch-up is impressive, considering that "The Massacre" had a six-week head start and was the only album this year to ring a 1 million-plus frame. The rapper's set had already sold more than 2.9 million units before "Mimi" reached stores.

Although some pundits questioned whether Carey needed to launch a special edition, which added No. 1 hit "Don't Forget About Us" to her impressive tally of chart-toppers, the title's numbers have grown since that edition arrived, selling 1.1 million copies in those six weeks.

Carey's set has averaged 189,000 copies per week since the Thanksgiving frame, while "The Massacre" has averaged close to 20,000 in that same window. This week, for example, she rises 7-6 on The Billboard 200 with 290,000 sold (up 52%), compared with 30,000 for 50 Cent (127-125, up 38%).

This week's numbers nudge her ahead by the score of 4.87 million to 4.83 million. Last week, 50 Cent led release-to-date sales by 229,000 copies. So, unless some nefarious or otherwise incredible news event during the year's final frame causes weekly sales for "The Massacre" to increase by a hundredfold, we can assume Carey will still hold the lead when next issue's charts conclude Nielsen SoundScan's tracking year.

Questions to ponder: Some of the remaining songs from the original "Mimi" edition have the potential to be big multiformat radio hits. Had the label ridden one of those songs as a next single, rather than adding "Forget" to a new edition, could Carey have mounted the same kind of end-of-year charge?

And, did the soundtrack to "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," which has sold 1.04 million copies since its Nov. 1 release, in any way cannibalize the numbers for "The Massacre"? ••••