Eminem is on the verge of becoming the first artist to have the year’s best-selling album twice since Nielsen/SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. With just three weeks to go in the chart year, Eminem’s seventh album, Recovery, has a solid lead as the year’s best-selling album. The rap star’s third album, The Eminem Show, was the best-seller of 2002.
Recovery has sold 3,146,000 copies since its release in June. That’s nearly as many copies as last year’s sales champ, Taylor Swift’s Fearless, sold in the entire calendar year (3,217,000). The total for Recovery includes 759,000 digital copies. That’s more digital copies than any album has ever sold in a calendar year. The old record was held by Coldplay‘s Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, which sold 617,000 digital copies in 2008.
Recovery has headed Nielsen/SoundScan’s year-to-date chart since Sept. 26, when it pulled ahead of Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now. That country/pop smash is #2 for the year-to-date. Taylor Swift’s Speak Now is #3. This marks the third time in Nielsen/SoundScan history that country acts have been responsible for two of the year’s top three albums. Billy Ray Cyrus‘ Some Gave All and Garth Brooks‘ Ropin’ The Wind were the top two albums of 1992. Rascal Flatts‘ Me And My Gang and Carrie Underwood‘s Some Hearts ranked #2 and #3, respectively, for 2006.
Taylor Swift is on track to become the first artist in Nielsen/SoundScan history to have an album rank among the year’s top three in three consecutive years. In addition, Swift will become only the second artist in this period to wind up in the year-end top 10 in four straight years. Mariah Carey scored from 1993 through 1996.
This is the third year in a row that Swift has had the year’s top-selling album by a female artist. No other female artist in Nielsen/SoundScan history has had the top album of the year three times. (Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Alanis Morissette, Britney Spears and Norah Jones each scored twice.)
Likewise, this is the third time that Eminem has had the year’s top-selling album by a male solo artist. No other male artist has had the top album of the year three times. (Garth Brooks and 50 Cent each scored twice.)
Lady Gaga’s The Fame ranks #5 for the year. It ranked #4 for 2009. It will become the fourth debut album in Nielsen/SoundScan history to make the year-end top 10 twice. It follows Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill (her American breakthrough), Evanescence‘s Fallen and Taylor Swift’s Taylor Swift.
The year-to-date top 10 includes two other debut albums: Justin Bieber’s My World 2.0 and Drake’s Thank Me Later. (These two albums were preceded by hit EPs).
This has been a good year for pop, which accounts for four of the year’s top 10 albums. This has also been a good year for rap, R&B and country. Each of these three genres accounts for two of the year’s top 10 albums.
But this has been a rotten year for rock. The year’s best-selling rock album, Linkin Park’s A Thousand Suns, ranks #34 for the year. This will be the lowest that the year’s top rock album has appeared on a year-end list in the Nielsen/SoundScan era. The only other time there was no rock album in the year-end top 10 was in 2002, when the year’s top rock album, Creed‘s Weathered, ranked #16 for the year.
Four acts (Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Susan Boyle and Lady Gaga) each have two albums in the year-to-date top 20. This suggests that as sales dwindle, a few key acts are increasingly dominating the scene.
Here are the 10 albums that have sold the most copies so far this year. The tally after the title is the total number of copies the album has sold through the week ending Dec. 12. I also show how many of the total sales were digital. Some of these albums sold additional copies prior to this chart year (which began with the week ending Jan. 10). If an album ranked among the top 200 albums of 2009, I show its 2009 ranking and sales tally.
Without further ado, here are the 10 albums that have sold the most total copies so far this year.
1. Eminem, Recovery, 3,146,000 (includes 759K digital). This is the fifth time that Eminem has had an album in the year-end top 10. It’s also the fifth time he has had the year’s top rap album. That’s more than any other rapper. (50 Cent came out on top twice.)
2. Lady Antebellum, Need You Now, 2,934,000 (includes 370K digital). This is the year’s biggest album by a group/duo and by a country artist.
3. Taylor Swift, Speak Now, 2,348,000 (includes 430K digital). This is the fourth year in a row that Swift has had the year’s best-selling country album. That tops Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, each of whom was responsible for the year’s top country album three times.
4. Justin Bieber, My World 2.0, 2,147,000 (includes 180K digital). This was Bieber’s first full-length album, and is the year’s best-selling debut album. It is also the year’s top album by a pop artist, by a teen artist and by an artist from outside the U.S. (Bieber is Canadian.)
5. Lady Gaga, The Fame, 1,528,000 (includes 361K digital). This is the year’s best-selling album that was released prior to 2010. It sold an additional 2,238,000 copies in 2009, which made it that year’s #4 album. (It sold an initial 150K copies in 2008, its year of release.)
6. Susan Boyle, The Gift, 1,363,000 (includes 26K digital). This is the second year in a row that Boyle has had an album in the year-end top 10. I Dreamed A Dream was #2 last year. This is also the second year in a row that a Boyle album has been the year’s best-seller by a British artist.
7. Sade, Soldier Of Love, 1,287,000 (includes 192K digital). This is the first time in the Nielsen/SoundScan era that Sade has had an album in the year-end top 10. This is the year’s top R&B album.
8. Drake, Thank Me Later, 1,211,000 (includes 251K digital). This is the first time that a rap artist’s debut album has finished in the year-end top 10 since Nelly scored 10 years ago with Country Grammar (#7 for that year).
9. Usher, Raymond V Raymond, 1,157,000 (includes 153K digital). This is the second time that Usher has finished in the year-end top 10. He had the #1 album of 2004, Confessions.
10. The Black Eyed Peas, The E.N.D., 1,088,000 (includes 210K digital). This is the third time that the Peas have had an album in the year-end top 10. The E.N.D. sold an additional 1,787,000 copies in 2009, which made it that year’s #7 album. The Peas also had the #5 album of 2005, Monkey Business.
As a bonus, here are six other albums that achieved distinctions this year, along with their rank on the year-to-date list.
14. Taylor Swift, Fearless, 818,000 (includes 121K digital). Last year’s #1 album ranks a very respectable #14 this year. That is the gentlest drop from #1 of any year-end champ since at least 1992. It surpasses Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory, which, after placing #1 for 2001, ranked #17 for 2002.
28. Various Artists, Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album, 592,000 (includes 166K digital). This is the year’s top soundtrack album. This is the third time in the past five years that a TV soundtrack has outsold the year’s top soundtrack to a theatrically-released movie.
34. Linkin Park, A Thousand Suns, 547,000 (includes 143,000 digital). This is the year’s top rock album. This is the third time that Linkin Park has had the year’s top rock album. The band also came out on top for 2001 (Hybrid Theory) and 2003 (Meteora). This tops Pearl Jam and Creed, each of whom had the year’s top rock album twice.
44. Various Artists, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, 488,000 (includes 138K digital). This is the year’s top soundtrack to a theatrically-released movie.
78. Michael Jackson, Number Ones, 357,000 (includes 30K digital). This 2003 compilation is the year’s #1 catalog album for the second year in a row. Note the low digital number: People want the CD as a remembrance.
xx. Broadway Cast Album, Wicked, 159,000 (includes 57K digital). This is the year’s top Broadway cast album for the third time in the past five years. (It fell behind Jersey Boys the past two years.) No ranking is shown because it isn’t in the year’s top 200.
Michael Jackson’s Live In Bucharest is the year’s #1 music video, with sales of 109,000. Jackson also had the #1 music video of 2009 with Number Ones, which posted a much healthier sales tally of 558,000.
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