Three Imaginary Girls

Seattle's Indie-Pop Press – Music Reviews, Film Reviews, and Big Fun

That noise you hear, the giant "THUD," is just the sound of albums plummeting after their first week on the Billboard Album charts. It seems to be a common theme, and this week we get to enjoy Smashing Pumpkins falling from #2 to #12, Interpol dropping from #4 to #26, and poor ol' Spoon crashing a stagger 25 spots from #10 to #35.

This, my friends, is what we call a "rabid fanbase" that scoops up the album the absolute moment it is released. I mean, you can loathe them all you like, but after five weeks, an eternity on the charts, the White Stripes are still sitting at a respectable #14. We'll see how the rest of these guys are doing after a month on the charts.

Anyway, another one of those insidious NOW That's What I Call Music compilations rules the charts; I think it's something like NOW 25 or something. Bah! The soundtrack to Hairspray also made its way up to #4 from 20, pretty good leap for the soundtrack – although this cross-pollination of movies/musicals is beginning to bug me, especially when I saw that the original cast recording of Legally Blonde: The Musical debuted at #86.

Couple other fun debuts: The Chemical Brothers still can muster a #65 entry, although We are the Night ain't that good (review forthcoming) and Pacific Northwest punk rockers MxPx made it to #76 with Secret Weapon. They might not be the chick magnet they once were, but they still sell some records.