Saturday, December 7, 2024

Number 1 With a Bullet: Nicki Minaj’s New Album Huge Debut, Taylor Swift Keeps 7 Titles in the Top 50

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Nicki Minaj roars back onto the pop charts tonight. Her “Pink Friday 2” debuts at number 1– without Kanye West bothering her.

“Pink Friday 2” sold a very healthy 222,665 copies including 87,247 paid downloads, CDs, and vinyl. The bulk of the sales was from streaming equivalent.

Still, Taylor Swift has 7 titles in the top 50, three of which are in top 10. So Taylor sold the most albums altogether of any artist.

The rest of the album chart is largely Christmas albums with evergreens from Nat King Cole, Phil Spector’s Christmas album, Frank Sinatra, Michael Buble, Brenda Lee plus, of course, Cher, and Mariah Carey. Most of the Christmas album sales are from streaming, with very little physical product being taken home.

Noah Kahan, fresh off “SNL,” sold around 42K of his album, “Stick Season,” which isn’t bad, Typically, “SNL” does not sell records anymore. Olivia Rodrigo, who was on “SNL” just last week, lodged just 23,611 of her “Sour” album sold. She was not a hit from the TV show. Her material was very disappointing.

Nicki Minaj, meanwhile, gets points for turning down Kanye West’s claim to have a duet they made three years ago placed on his new album. She seems to be a lot brighter than the singers who did the album including Charlie Wilson (terrible decision) and, unsurprisingly, Chris Brown.

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

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