He's the Halliburton of country music: No contemporary performer has benefited more from the war on terrorism than Toby Keith. The outspoken singer scored his second straight Number debut with Shock N Y'all (itself an allusion to the war in Iraq), which sold 585,000 copies, according to SoundScan.

Keith's numbers continue to snowball. Just two years ago he splashed onto the charts at Number Nine with Pull My Chain, a collection of jingle-ish new country. Post 9/11, jingle turned to jingo with his belligerent anthem "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)," which made Keith a household name. Unleashed, which featured that tune, gave Keith his first Number One on the pop charts last year and sold 338,000 in its first week. A much-publicized feud with the Dixie Chicks kept the husky Okie in the headlines and set the stage for Shock's large debut. As far as first week yardsticks go, Shock didn't best the Chicks' Home, which sold 780,000, but it's nearly double the debut figures posted by fellow chart-topping new countryites Kenny Chesney and Alan Jackson.

After a rather peaked chart last week, sales perked up with nine albums on this week's chart topping six-figure sales. Older albums fared well, and a strong batch of new releases helped push overall sales in the Top 200 from 4 million on last week's chart to 6.1 million this week.

Sarah McLachlan ended a six-year silence with Afterglow, which was snapped up by 361,000 fans at Number Two. The Now That's What I Call Music! franchise still has some gas left: The fourteenth volume sold 322,000 copies at Number Three. And Sheryl Crow's The Very Best of Sheryl Crow moved 247,000 copies at Number Four. That left the Number Five slot open for last week's chart-topper, OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which sold 148,000 copies. Ja Rule's Blood in My Eye and P.O.D.'s Payable on Death also jumped into the Top Ten at Numbers Six and Nine with sales of 140,000 and 106,000 respectively.

That was hardly the end of the newcomer parade: Other strong first-week numbers were posted by Coldplay's Live 2003 (Number Thirteen, 71,200 copies sold), Bon Jovi's This Left Feels Right (Number Fourteen, 70,800), Wyclef Jean's The Preacher's Son (Number Twenty-two, 49,000), Bob Seger's Greatest Hits 2 (Number Twenty-three, 47,000), Fabolous' More Street Dreams, Vol. 2 (Number 44,000) and Ryan Adams' Rock N Roll (Number Thirty-three, 40,000).

The bigger sales should continue for another few weeks, as big releases by Pink and Kid Rock made their way into stores this week, with albums by Missy Elliott, Britney Spears and Alicia Keys en route.

This week's Top Ten: Toby Keith's Shock N Y'all; Sarah McLachlan's Afterglow; Now That's What I Call Music! 14; Sheryl Crow's The Very Best of Sheryl Crow; OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below; Ja Rule's Blood in My Eye; Rod Stewart's Great American Songbook, Vol. 2; Clay Aiken's Measure of a Man; P.O.D.'s Payable on Death; and Ludacris' Chicken and Beer.

ANDREW DANSBY
(November 12, 2003)