Well, now that two big albums by Green Day and Eminem have had their debut weeks in the USA, Green Day's new one is in its 2nd week. So how do things stack up with the opening weeks in the USA with U2's No Line On The Horizon.
Relapse: 602,000
No Line On The Horizon: 484,000
21st century Breakdown: 377,000(2 weeks combined)
Despite being the biggest selling album artist of the 00s and having some of the largest opening debut weeks north of 1 million in the USA, Eminem's Relapse comes in with 602,000, just 118,000 more or 24% more than U2's No Line On The Horizon. Mediatraffic numbers for the world come out Thursday night and it will be interesting to see if Relapse was able to match No Line On The Horizon's opening week sales worldwide.
It should be interesting to see Gibson, Dopper, Moggio, and others explain Relapse as a success but, No Line On The Horizon as a failure in light of these sales figures.
Hopefully by now more people will begin to see just how successful selling 484,000 copies in the USA is in 2009, in an album's opening week on the chart.
By the way, Eminem's last album Encore sold 710,000 copies in its first 3 days. It was a Friday release. Its first full week on chart, week 2, saw Encore sell 978,000 copies. So, the first 10 days of release saw Eminem sell 1,688,000 copies. Relapse sales for its first 10 days will be less than half that number.