SoundScanner: 'Frozen' Tops The Charts While Britney And Bieber's Careers Are On Ice
While the nation suffers under the deep freeze of the Polar Vortex, the No. 1 album in the country is perhaps unsurprisingly the soundtrack to Disney's Frozen. Hey, it's cold out there – might as well embrace it. While Frozen is chilling at the top of the charts, several albums cross important sales milestones this week, and we also look at recent fumbles from Britney Spears and Justin Bieber. Bundle up for this week's SoundScanner:
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‘Frozen' hits No. 1: The soundtrack to Disney's smash hit Frozen – $300 million domestic and counting – ices the top spot on this week's Nielsen SoundScan Top Current Albums chart. The album jumps up three spots to take the No. 1 position away from Beyoncé on a 55 percent sales surge, one of only three albums in this week's top 25 to post a sales gain over last week. The album sold 165,000 copies this week (to Beyoncé's 130,000), bringing its total sales to a gold-certified 503,000. Frozen debuted at No. 18 on the chart last month and has increased in sales every week. It is the first soundtrack to hit No. 1 since the Les Miserables soundtrack did so a year ago. And Frozen didn't even have any Russell Crowe songs to help put it over the top.
Katy Perry goes platinum: Katy Perry's Prism crosses the 1 million sales marker this week, in its 11th chart frame. Prism sold 51,000 copies this week, good enough for No. 4 on the chart (sandwiched between Eminem and Lorde), which brings its total sales to 1.02 million. Perry isn't the only star celebrating a sales milestone this week; Fall Out Boy —who, by the way, will be performing as part of VH1's upcoming Super Bowl Blitz—'s Save Rock & Roll (No. 34), in its 38th week on the chart, hits gold this week, and the hits compilation Now That's What I Call Music! 48 – which features hits by The Royal Concept, Basic Vacation and New Politics (and, sure, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, too) sold 34,000 copies this week, bringing its total sales to a golden 503,000.
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‘Britney Jean' flounders: It was a fruitful fall for the ladies of pop; aside from Perry's now-platinum Prism, Beyoncé's self-titled smash (No. 2 this week, 1.4 million sales to date), Lorde's Pure Heroine (No. 5, 733,000), Lady Gaga's Artpop (No. 12, 618,000) and Miley Cyrus' Bangerz (No. 13, 786,000) all found a place at the table. But one-time pop queen Britney Spears' latest, Britney Jean, hasn't been as lucky. This week, its fifth week on the chart, the album comes in at No. 19 with 15,000 sales. That brings its total to 209,000, which is still 67,000 copies shy of what 2011's Femme Fatale sold its first week. Maybe it's time for Joseph Kahn to leak that much talked about director's cut of the "Perfume" video to stoke interest for his leading lady.
‘Timber' on top: Ke$ha, who entered rehab this week to seek treatment for an eating disorder, hangs on to No. 1 on this week's Digital Songs chart, with her duet with Pitbull, "Timber." The song sold 301,000 downloads this week, bringing its total to a robust 2.28 million. Smash hits "Say Something" (No. 2), "Counting Stars" (No. 3), "Dark Horse" (No. 4) and "The Monster" (No. 5) round out the top five, with most songs on the chart taking a tumble from last week. The top exception? Last year's No. 1 song, "Blurred Lines," which posted a 12 percent sales gain from last week, the only song in the Top 25 to see a week-to-week increase. Everybody get up all over again.
Bieber vanishes: And where, oh where, is Justin Bieber? The Biebs' ambitious "Music Mondays" stunt, where he released one new song a week for 10 straight weeks, yielded only modest returns, and one month after the cycle completed only one of those songs is currently charting. "All That Matters," the second of Bieber's "Music Mondays" releases, is No. 98 on this week's chart, its 25,000 sales bringing its total to 266,000 downloads. "All That Matters" was helped along by its music video (29 million YouTube views and counting), which was released last month and features a shirtless Bieber. So perhaps the project can still be salvaged – all it needs is a lot more shirtless Bieber videos.