Crowded At The Top: DMB on the Charts

It’s official. The Dave Matthews Band is the biggest rock band in America. Not only is DMB the only rock band able to sell out football stadiums for this summer’s touring season, but the group just landed the country’s No. 1 album, ending Titanic‘s amazing sixteen-week run in the process. Before These Crowded Streets, which sold an eye-popping 422,000 copies for the week ending May 3 according to SoundScan, is the Dave Matthews Band’s first No. 1 album. Those first-week sales numbers represent the best showing by any rock act this year, beating the previous one-week mark set when Pearl Jam’s Yield sold 359,000 back in February.

The week’s other big debut belonged to the 300-pound rapper, Big Punisher, whose Capitol Punishment comes in at No. 5.

On the soft side, the reunited Public Enemy makes a shaky showing at No. 26 with their soundtrack to Spike Lee’s He Got Game. Meanwhile, Walking Into Clarksdale, the latest from classic rockers Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, plunges from No. 8 to No. 25 its second week on the charts.

From the top, it was Before These Crowded Streets, followed by the soundtrack to City of Angels (selling 165,000 copies); Titanic (155,000); George Strait’s One Step at a Time (140,000); Capital Punishment (136,000); Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love (107,000); Backstreet Boys (104,000); Savage Garden (98,000); Faith Hill’s Faith (82,000) and Shania Twain’s Come On Over (82,000).

The week’s top ten features three country stars (Strait, Hill and Twain), and that list may grow next week with new albums by LeAnn Rimes and Garth Brooks sure to debut big.

Question: Which multi-platinum singer appears on both the No. 1 and No. 2 album this week? Answer: Alanis Morissette. She contributes the song “Uninvited” to the City of Angels soundtrack and sings guest vocals on the DMB tracks “Don’t Drink the Water” and, more prominently, “Spoon.”