Metallica scores its fifth No. 1 album

[Mike]

Metallica scores its fifth No. 1 album, a feat topped by only one other band in hard rock history

Week Ending Sept. 14, 2008: Metallica And The Hard Rock Pantheon

Metallica's studio first album in more than five years, Death Magnetic, enters The Billboard 200 at #1. It's Metallica's fifth #1 album, a total topped by only one hard rock band in history. Led Zeppelin amassed seven #1 albums between Led Zeppelin II in 1969 and How The West Was Won in 2003. Van Halen is the only other hard rock band to land five #1 albums. The group, which like Metallica was formed in Los Angeles, topped the chart with five albums between 5150 in 1986 and Best Of Volume 1 in 1996.

Metallica surpasses these other top bands in two respects. Metallica is the first hard rock act to reach #1 with five consecutive #1 studio albums. Led Zeppelin and Van Halen each had four straight #1 studio sets. Also, Metallica is the top-selling hard rock band since Nielsen/SoundScan took over tracking for Billboard in May 1991. AC/DC is in second place. (Led Zeppelin is #41. Van Halen ranks #71.)

Death Magnetic posted first-week sales of 490,000. Impressively, the band ran up this total in just three days, between the release of the album on Friday and the close of the tracking period on Sunday. This is the fourth highest first-week sales tally so far in 2008, behind albums by Lil Wayne, Coldplay and Jonas Brothers. This is the heftiest first-week total for a metal-edged hard rock band since Tool's 10,000 Days bowed in May 2006 with sales of 564,000 copies.

Billboard's Keith Caulfield reports that Metallica is the first group to see five of its albums debut at #1 on The Billboard 200. Runners-up, with four albums that bowed at #1, are the Beatles, U2 and Dave Matthews Band.

All five of Metallica's #1 albums have had first-week sales in excess of 400,000 copies. The band's eponymous 1991 album, widely known as The Black Album, started with sales of 598,000. Load established the band's personal best when it had first-week sales of 680,000 in 1996. Reload started with 435,000 in 1997. St. Anger, which also had a Friday release, bowed with sales of 418,000 in 2003. It's extraordinary for an act to retain a fan base this large and avid over such a long period. Most of the other acts that enjoyed first-week sales in excess of 500,000 copies in the first half of the ‘90s are either inactive (Guns N' Roses, Pink Floyd) or haven't had first-week sales of this magnitude in years (Pearl Jam, Snoop Doggy Dogg). (Garth Brooks is believed to have had first-week sales above 400,000 earlier in this decade, but it was when albums sold in only one chain, such as his Wal-Mart exclusives, weren't eligible for the chart.)

Metallica first cracked the top 10 with ...And Justice For All in October 1988, giving them a nearly 20-year span of top 10 albums. The band first hit the chart 24 years ago this month with Ride The Lightning. They're the group with the longest history to land a #1 album since Eagles, which hit #1 in November-more than 35 years after they first charted with their debut album, Eagles.

Another hard rock smash, AC/DC's Back In Black, jumps to #1 on the catalog chart. The 1980 classic sold 11,000 copies this week and would have ranked #43 on the big chart if older, catalog albums were eligible to compete there. This is the album's third trip to the top of the catalog chart. It first topped the chart in June 1991 (when the chart was just in its fifth week). It returned to the top spot in January 2006.

Pink's "So What" holds at #1 on Hot Digital Songs for the second week. The song sold 253,000 downloads this week. This is the heftiest total any song has achieved since Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" reached the same number in June.

Following up on my lead item from three weeks ago, Estelle's record company, Home School/Atlantic, relented and is allowing her wonderful "American Boy" (featuring Kanye West) to again be sold as a download. The song re-enters the top 10 on Hot Digital Songs at #9. It sold 91,000 downloads this week, bringing its total to date to 1,027,000. That's an impressive total, considering it lost three weeks of sales right at the peak of its popularity. (And what of Studio All-Stars' copy-cat version of the song? It unsurprisingly disappears from Hot Digital Songs. It managed to sell 101,000 copies in its first three weeks to fans who really do need to learn to be more discerning.)

While I'm on the subject of soundalikes, Hit Masters' version of Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" dips to #51 on Hot Digital Songs. The track has sold 260,000 downloads in the last five weeks. In the same period, Kid Rock has sold 446,000 copies of Rock N Roll Jesus. Advantage: Mr. Rock.

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[TheLizard]

The songs on this new album are pretty good, but the production is terrible.

[Mike]

Didn't most people download it for free anyway?

[TheLizard]

Most likely.

I read something today that says that the mix of the album for the new Guitar Hero game sounds much better than the actual CD mix.