Rihanna tops album charts for first time with 'Unapologetic'
Maybe all those topless tweets are working?
The first-week sales figures for Rihanna latest record are in, and the news is good: Billboard reports that Unapologetic has landed at No. 1 this week, a career first. The album — her seventh in seven years — brought the singer her strongest sales week ever, with 238,000 copies sold.
This breaks Rihanna’s streak of having the most No. 1 hit songs without a No. 1 album. (Last week, her latest single “Diamonds” became her 12th to top the Hot 100, passing Whitney Houston to become the artist with the fourth-most top singles.)
“We are so proud and happy to deliver Rihanna her first #1 album in the U.S.,” Island Def Jam president Steve Bartels said in a statement. “Taking an unusually short runway and turning it to an advantage — like the unprecedented 777 Tour — is a testament to the teamwork, ingenuity, ethic, and belief in the legacy of this artist that showed in every single hand that touched this project.”
Before Unapologetic, Rihanna’s best sales week belonged to 2010’s Loud, which landed at No. 3 with 207,000 moved units, while her previous chart peak was 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad, which debuted at No. 2 that year.
But RiRi wasn’t the only one who shined bright like a diamond this week. Adele zoomed past the 10-million mark with 21, which is now the 21st (yep) album in SoundScan history to do so. And she did it all in 92 weeks — the shortest time span for a diamond album since the days of N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys.
Elsewhere in chart news, Taylor Swift’s Red remained at No. 2, scoring 185,000 in sales, while last week’s chart champ One Direction dropped to No. 3 with 176,000 copies sold.
As for Idol idol Phillip Phillips, his “Home”-driven The World From the Side of the Moon debuted impressively at No. 4, with 169,000. While that number isn’t quite up there with the 197,000 Scotty McCreery scored with last year’s Clear as Day, it ranks in the stronger side of overall American Idol debuts.
But if you’re only here to find out how Kid Rock fared, then you’re in luck: the rock vet swooped in at No. 5 with 146,000 copies, making Rebel Soul his seventh album to hit the top ten.
For more fun chart news, head over to Billboard, where Led Zeppelin dukes it out with Jason Aldean and Keyshia Cole sneaks onto the list.
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