Maybe pop isn’t dead.
Boy band ‘N Sync sold nearly 1.9 million copies of their new Celebrity album in the week ended Sunday, Reuters reports.
The album, released July 24, holds the second-best week sales numbers in history, outdoing everyone but themselves.
In March 2000, the band’s No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million copies in the first week. It has sold 10.6 million copies to date.
Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP came in second in sales with 1.76 million in late 2000.
‘N Sync did not expect Celebrity to sell as much as No Strings Attached, Justin Timberlake told MTV last week.
“All that stuff, we really don’t take that into consideration,” Timberlake said. “We wanna stick around for longer than the first week.”
Band member Chris Kirkpatrick recently told Launch.com how ironic it would be to sell more than a 1.5 million copies of Celebrity with the perception that that their sales are in a slump.
“Music really is in a different place in the sales market, period,” ‘N Sync’s JC Chasez told Launch.com, explaining that the state of economy has helped music sales this year. “You know, nobody’s doing the numbers that they did last year. Music was just selling at an all-time high last year.”
The release of Celebrity also helped No Strings Attached, which logged a sales gain of nearly 12 percent, climbing from No. 100 to No. 95.
Celebrity knocked Alicia Keys’ Songs in a Minor from the No. 1 spot to No. 2 from after spending five weeks in the chart. Keys’ album sold 1.7 million copies less than Celebrity.
Neil Diamond’s Three-Chord Opera opened at No. 15. Actress-pop star Jennifer Lopez rebounded into the top 20 with her latest release, J.Lo, rising 49 places from No. 66 to No. 17 thanks to her latest single, “I’m Real,” Reuters reports.
