Michael Buble beats KISS on album chart
After only three days of sales, Michael Buble's new album topped the Billboard 200 chart, while rock legends KISS finished in second place, the highest album-chart position of their career.
Buble's Crazy Love scored sales of 132,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, giving the pop singer his second No. 1 album.
Buble's last set, 2007's Call Me Irresponsible, debuted with 212,000 at No. 2 before moving to No. 1 the following week. Crazy is the artist's third top 10 album. His second studio set, It's Time, debuted and peaked at No. 7 in 2005.
The release of Crazy was pushed up from its original date of October 13 to October 9 -- likely to capitalize on Buble's chat and performance on the Oprah Winfrey Show that day.
Sonic Boom, the new Walmart-exclusive studio album from KISS, sold 108,000 copies, the band's second-best weekly sales tally since SoundScan began tracking data in 1991.
KISS' previous chart high arrived with 1998's Psycho-Circus, which debuted and peaked at No. 3 with sales of 110,000. Psycho's opening frame is also the group's best SoundScan sales week.
Country kingpin Toby Keith notched his 10th top 10 album on the Billboard 200 with American Ride, which drove in at No. 3 on sales of 90,000.
Backstreet Boys netted their seventh consecutive top 10 album on the Billboard 200 with This Is Us, starting at No. 9 with 42,000. The quartet's last effort, 2007's Unbreakable, entered and peaked at No. 7 with 81,000.
The previous week's No. 1, Barbra Streisand's Love Is the Answer, fell to No. 4 with 75,000 while Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 moved up one notch, to No. 5, with 65,000. Mariah Carey's Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel slipped four spots to No. 7 with 54,000, and Miley Cyrus' The Time of Our Lives climbed three spots to No. 8 with 47,000. Rounding out the top 10 is Breaking Benjamin's Dear Agony, which moved down six places in its second week (41,000).
Overall album sales in the week ended October 11 totaled 6.27 million units, down 9 percent from the previous week and down 2 percent from the year-earlier period. Year-to-date album sales stand at 269.7 million, down 13 percent, compared with the total at this point in 2008.