Billboard Chart: The Civil Wars on number one

Last week’s chart-topper Robin Thicke fell to number three.

Country-rock-folk duo The Civil Wars hit number one on the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, knocking off last week’s chart-topper, Robin Thicke.

The band’s eponymously titled second album sold 116,000 copies in its first week, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

An interesting fact however, is that the band members — Joy Williams and John Paul White — are currently not on talking terms. According to contactmusic.com, the duo scrapped all live shows in November 2012 due to “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition”. Williams has now revealed that the future of the group remains uncertain.

“If you want to know what happened to the band, listen to the album,” Williams told the Associated Press. “It’s so honest and rich and, not to toot my own horn, I’m just really proud of what we created together. And we created it together — we just happened to be in a bit of a civil war ourselves.”

The latest compilation of the Now That’s What I Call Music! series, Now 47, featuring hits from Justin Timberlake, Selena Gomez and Bruno Mars, landed at number two, with sales of 82,000 in its first week, while Thicke’s Blurred Lines album dropped to number three, according to Reuters.

R&B singer and producer Thicke held onto the top position on Billboard’s digital songs chart with his raunchy single Blurred Lines, featuring rapper TI and singer Pharrell Williams.

British heavy metal band Asking Alexandria landed at number six with its latest album, From Death to Destiny, and gospel singer Tye Tribbett rounded out the new debuts with his latest record, Greater Than, at number nine.

Overall album sales for the week ending August 11 totaled 4.7 million units, down 5% from the comparable week in 2012, Billboard said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2013.

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