Update: Ariana Grande’s “My Everything” debuts atop the Billboard 200 with 169,000 first week sales.
The total bests that of predecessor “Yours Truly,” which debuted at #1 last year, by 31,000.
According to Billboard, the week’s Top 10 albums were as follows:
1) Ariana Grande – My Everything – 169K
2) Brad Paisley – Moonshine in the Trunk – 53K
3) Kem – Promise to Love: Album IV – 52K
4) Guardians of the Galaxy – Awesome Mix, Volume 1 – 48K
5) Sam Smith – In the Lonely Hour – 30K
6) Wiz Khalifa – Blacc Hollywood – 30K
7) Frozen Soundtrack – 27K
8) NOW 51 – 25K
9) 5 Seconds of Summer – 5 Seconds of Summer – 22K
10) Avenged Sevenfold – Waking the Fallen (re-issue) – 22K
==================
Billboard will not reveal official album sales figures until later Wednesday, but such data will only serve to color what is already official: Ariana Grande’s sophomore album “My Everything” claims the number one spot on the weekly Billboard 200.
The publication formally announced the achievement Tuesday night.
Grande thus becomes the first female artist since Susan Boyle to open at #1 on the Billboard 200 with her first two studio releases. Boyle achieved the feat with 2009’s “I Dreamed a Dream” and 2010’s “The Gift.”
According to Hits Daily Double, which publishes its own sales data in advance of the Billboard/Nielsen Soundscan report, Grande moved approximately 168,435 copies of “My Everything” during its first week of release. Likely to differ only slightly from Billboard’s final report, the figure indicates that Grande’s album performed at the high-end of the midweek forecast (150-170,000) but towards the lower end of pre-release expectations (150-200,000).
Roughly three times that of Brad Paisley’s runner-up “Moonshine in the Trunk,” which debuted with approximately 53,039 first week sales, the estimated “My Everything” total only represents a modest increase over predecessor “Yours Truly.” That album, which received support from “The Way” but ultimately launched before Grande had established herself as a bona fide pop superstar, debuted at #1 with sales of 138,000 late last summer.
But given that Grande has reached the top ten of Billboard’s Hot 100 three times this summer and will debut atop the Billboard 200 with a six-figure sales week, it is doubtful she will be stressing over the album’s commercial performance.