Album Sales Hit a New Low Last Week

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The struggling music industry hit a new low last week: Only 4.95 million albums were sold in the U.S. between August 8th and 14th — the lowest total since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking numbers in 1991. The one other time album sales fell short of five million copies? Earlier this year, during the week ending May 30th, when 4.98 million albums sold.

Sales ebbed despite another big week for the Number One album, Eminem's Recovery, which moved 133,000 copies, becoming 2010's second double-platinum. (Lady Antebellum's Need You Now has still accumulated more sales.) But Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, which dropped to number two in its second week, fell dramatically, from 156,000 to 52,000 copies. The Camp Rock 2 soundtrack, which came in at number three, sold only 41,000 copies.

Next week is looking up, slightly, with new albums from Ray LaMontagne and Iron Maiden. Albums due from Taylor Swift, Kanye West, T.I., Susan Boyle and Michael Jackson should also boost the rest of 2010.

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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