Maybe honesty really is the best policy… for placing high on a Billboard chart.
The unabashedly sincere Dashboard Confessional’s third studio album, A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, a Scar, will come in at #2 on next week’s Billboard albums chart. Sales of more than 122,000 copies affords the follow-up to 2001’s The Places You Have Come to Fear Most a first runner-up slot, right behind Alan Jackson’s Greatest Hits Volume II.
The most popular country singer of the last decade after Garth Brooks sold more than 328,000 copies of his third best-of set, according to SoundScan, to place above all others on next week’s chart.
Hip-hop collective State Property’s The Chain Gang Vol. 2 will be the only other top-10 debut. Boasting a cameo by none other than Dirt McGirt (a.k.a. Ol’ Dirty Bastard), the Rock-A-Fella platform sold more than 69,000 copies to come in at #6.
The rest of the top 10 finds former four-week champ, the “Bad Boys II” soundtrack, at #3 (106,000); Evanescence’s Fallen dropping a notch to #4 (75,000); Beyoncé’s Dangerously in Love doing the same to #5 (70,000); Chingy’s Jackpot slipping two places to #7 (66,000); the Now That’s What I Call Music! Vol. 13 compilation falling six spots to #8 (64,000); Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me moving from #7 to #9 (56,000); and the soundtrack to “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” re-entering the top 10 at #10 (55,000), thanks to the promotion surrounding the film’s home-video release.
“Lizzie McGuire” star Hilary Duff, meanwhile, tops the singles chart with “So Yesterday,” a song appearing on her forthcoming LP, Metamorphosis, which drops next week.
Chart-watchers will find something amiss in the top 10 for the first time in six months: 50 Cent. Get Rich or Die Tryin’ will vacate the upper echelon for the first time since its release in February. The best-selling album of the year, at 5.7 million and counting, will slide from #6 to #11, while adding another 54,000 copies to its total.
The fourth volume in the successful Kidz Bop Kids series, featuring kid-sung covers of Avril’s “Sk8er Boi,” J.Lo’s “Jenny From the Block” and Justin’s “Cry Me a River,” will come in at #14. Thyrty: The 30th Anniversary Collection, a greatest- hits set to celebrate southern rockers’ Lynyrd Skynyrd’s three-decade insistence that the letter “y” can, too, be used as a vowel, will land at #16, thanks to being filled with favorites such as “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Gimme Three Steps.”
The #1 film in the country has the #25 album to accompany it. The soundtrack to “Freddy Vs. Jason,” which features cuts from Slipknot, Sevendust and Sepultura, sold more than 31,000 copies.
Other notable chart debuts include Legacy: The Absolute Best of the Doors at #63; Goodie Mob member Big Gipp’s Mutant Mindframe at #162; Pat Benatar’s first album in six years, Go, at #188; and the soundtrack to “The Cheetah Girls,” featuring its star, Raven-Symone, and 3LW members Adrienne Bailon and Kiely Williams, at #194.