Coldplay's “Ghost Stories” tops Billboard 200 for second week

PanARMENIAN.Net - Coldplay's Ghost Stories holds for a second week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, while the top debut is Mariah Carey's Me. I Am Mariah . . . The Elusive Chanteuse at No. 3, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Ghost Stories sold 83,000 copies in the week ending June 1, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's down 78 percent from a week ago, when it launched at No. 1 with 383,000, the biggest sales frame for an album this year.

Two-week sales for Ghost Stories stand at 466,000, making it the sixth-largest-selling album of 2014. The soundtrack to Frozen continues to rule by far as the year's top seller, with 2.5 million, and remains the only album to have sold 1 million copies in 2014.

Brantley Gilbert's Just As I Am also stays steady in the No. 2 slot on the latest Billboard 200, as it sells 65,000 (down 69 percent). It bowed in the runner-up position at week ago with 211,000.

Carey collects her 17th top 10 album as Me. I Am Mariah . . . The Elusive Chanteuse enters at No. 3 with 58,000. Her last non-holiday studio effort, 2009's Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, also debuted at No. 3, but with 168,000.

The debut of Elusive is Carey's smallest opening for a non-holiday studio effort since SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991. Her previous low came when 1991's Emotions launched at No. 4 with 156,000. Carey has tallied six No. 1 albums between 1991 and 2008.

Chanteuse was tentatively earmarked for a release in March 2013, but was then pushed to July 23, then to May 6, 2014 and finally May 27. The promotion for the new set arguably started in August 2012 with the release of the single "Triumphant (Get 'Em)," a song which does not appear on Chanteuse. The new album's most recently charting single on the Billboard Hot 100 was "You're Mine (Eternal)," which spent one week on the list, peaking at No. 88 (on the March 1-dated chart).

Following Carey on the Billboard 200 is the soundtrack to Frozen, which remains at No. 4 with just over 58,000 (down 10 percent).

The second of three debuts in the top 10 is Austin Mahone's debut EP, The Secret, which starts at No. 5 with 46,000. Mahone's long-in-the-works debut comes two-and-a-half years after he first appeared on a Billboard chart, when he bowed on the Social 50 tally dated Nov. 26, 2011. Mahone is aiming to release another album -- a full-length project -- before the end of the year.

Next week's Billboard 200 competes with the same week in 2013 when: Queens of the Stone Age's Like Clockwork debuted at No. 1 with 91,000 and Daft Punk's Random Access Memories fell to the No. 2 slot with 62,000 (down 33 percent) after two weeks at No. 1.