Coldplay continues to weave magic through music

Rock band’s new album Ghost Stories is a Billboard 200 topper.

LOS ANGELES:

Coldplay’s new album topped the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday in its opening week, notching the highest weekly sales by any artiste so far this year and scoring the British rock group its fourth number one album on the chart.

Ghost Stories, the sixth studio album from the quartet fronted by Chris Martin, sold 383,000 copies in the United States last week, according to figures compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. Their sales beat those of country singer Eric Church’s February release, The Outsiders, for the top US sales week this year by nearly 100,000 copies.

Downloads accounted for 64 per cent of total sales for Ghost Stories, Billboard said. Country singer Brantley Gilbert’s Just As I Am debuted at number two on the chart with sales of 211,000 copies.

Michael Jackson’s posthumous release, Xscape, fell to third from second, while the hit soundtrack to Disney’s $1.2 billion-grossing animated film, Frozen, held at number four. Last week’s top album, The Black Keys’ Turn Blue, dropped to number five.

New releases in the top 10 this week include singer-songwriter Phillip Phillips’ Behind the Light at number seven followed by the soundtrack to the film The Fault in Our Stars at number eight. Australian rapper Iggy Azalea’s song Fancy was the top download of the week with 336,000 in sales. It knocked a song that features Azalea, Ariana Grande’s Problem, from the number one spot on the digital songs chart.

Total album sales for the past week ended May 25 were 4.77 million, a decline of eight per cent compared to the same week last year. Overall album sales for the year are down by 15 per cent as compared to the same period last year.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1^st, 2014.

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