Conchord-tastic.
April 21 marked the NZ release of albums by Flight of the Conchords and Shihad. This week's top 40 album charts came out yesterday and we have Shihad at no 1 and Flight of the Conchords at no 2. Shihad have already gone gold (sales of 7,500) in NZ. Congrats all round.
The big news? The comedy duo sold over 52,000 albums in their first week of release in the US, debuting at no 3 on the Billboard charts. Does this make FOTC the highest charting NZ album in the US ever? Anyone know? ADDED: Just checked Crowded House's US chart history -their highest placing for an album was their debut, which peaked at no 12 - their highest placing single was no 2 for Don't Dream It's Over (source: Frenz.com).
From Rolling Stone... "An engagement and a (possible) pregnancy wasn’t enough to help Ashlee Simpson, as the singer’s new album Bittersweet World landed at number four with 47,387 copies sold. Simpson was beat out by Mariah Carey’s E=MC2, which took number one for a second consecutive week, Leona Lewis’ Spirit at two and, surprisingly, Flight of the Conchords’ self-titled debut, which grabbed the third spot with 52,133 copies sold. That’s right: Pete Wentz’s fiancée got edged by the comic duo who were on the show that followed Big Love on HBO."
ADDED: The Aussie papers have picked up this story from Reuters, with the headline "Conchords more popular than Crowded House" which isn't strictly true. Crowded House went higher in the US charts than FOTC - CH hit no 2 with Don't Dream It's Over. And, as Simon noted in the comments, the sales numbers are very small compared to, say, three years ago. I'm trying to track down the sales numbers for CH's no 12 placing.
UPDATE: From author (Crowded House bio "Something So Strong") and journalist Chris Bourke... "sales of the debut album would be over a million. Soundscan didn't exist back in 1986/1987 when the first CH album was on its slow rise up the charts. Remember it took a full year from first release until "Don't Dream It's Over" hit in the US in April 1987. Between May 1986 and Christmas 1986, the album had only sold 3000 copies in New Zealand."
Go check out Chris's CH blog, Something So Strong, he's got a great post on CH album engineer Tchad Blake.
ADDED "From TV 3 news last night... ""The fact Flight of the Conchords has broken at number three on the actual album charts is going to be way more important than any number of New Zealand music months," says Kiwi music legend Chris Knox." Link
4 comments:
shipped gold Peter... actual sales are a lot less than that
coll to see two NZ acts in those positons though :)
yes highest ever in the US..very well done.
As an industry aside though, those sales figures are a bit scary...three years back selling 100,000 in a week would likely not get you into the US top 20. US album sales are down some 15% on last year which were down some 20% on the year before etc
Yeah, Simon - I thought that when i saw the numbers - 'thats a small amount to get so high in the US charts'. Same goes for NZ charts - I've heard that recently, the top album was only selling 900 in a week to hit no 1.
Yeah, the OMC album did almost a million and a half in the US but it's highest chart was 39. Things are not healthy in Top 40-land.
But none of that is to detract from the Conchords mighty achievement, which has to be seen in relative to the times.
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