"Weathered" holds onto Number One for fourth straight week
What difference does a year make? How about a difference of almost 1 million records, or nearly a third. That's how the Top Ten pre-Christmas week this year stacks up with the juggernaut that was Xmas2K. Many of the names remain the same, but there are some telling stories on this week's chart. Creed's Weathered had little trouble retaining its hold on Number One, and actually enjoyed a 100,000 sales boost from the previous week, logging 555,000 sales for its fourth straight time on top. Those are beefy numbers, hardly worth tangling with, but as the year spins towards an end, we'll pull out the 2000 measuring tape one last time. This week last year, Creed's Human Clay sat at Number Four on the charts with sales about 175,000 short of what Weathered registered this week. The difference? Human Clay had been in stores for sixty-four weeks by that point.But a champion is still a champion, be it a fleet Ali or a fat, fortysomething Forman. And the four weeks on top mark the first time this year an album has spent its first four weeks on top. As a matter of fact, only Shaggy's Hotshot (a 2000 release) has spent more weeks at Number One (six) than Weathered, this year. The notion of a Rumours or Thriller dropping anchor for more than half a year is all but dead, as the marquee releases just come too frequently and too fast, even in a lackluster year.