| Thursday 29 December 2005 |
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Mariah Carey overtakes 50 Cent
Capping one of pop music's biggest comebacks, Mariah Carey has overtaken rap star 50 Cent in a year-end battle to claim the hottest-selling album of 2005. Carey's Grammy-nominated "The Emancipation of Mimi" climbed to the No. 1 spot for the year on U.S. sales of 290,000 copies during the week ending December 25, raising her 37-week total to 4.87 million units, retail tracker Nielsen SoundScan reported on Wednesday.
Assuming "Mimi" stays the course through the post-Christmas sales rush, Carey would become the first female solo artist to boast the year's top album since Alanis Morissette in 1996 with "Jagged Little Pill".
50 Cent slipped to No. 2 for 2005 as his sophomore set "The Massacre" posted sales of 30,000 copies last week, taking his 43-week tally to 4.83 million units, Nielsen SoundScan said. The rapper stands little chance of regaining the lead from Carey so long as the final week of the year - traditionally the busiest in music sales - brings another six-figure tally for "Mimi", as expected.
On the latest sales chart, "Mimi" stood at No. 6 for the week, while "Massacre" languished at No. 125. Both albums had opened at No. 1. Carey's triumph came as new releases from R&B star Mary J. Blige and Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx led a surge in music retail activity that snapped a pre-Christmas slump.
Blige sold 727,000 copies of "The Breakthrough" to claim the third chart-topper and the best sales week of her career, while Foxx marked his return to music by landing at No. 2 with "Unpredictable", which sold 598,000 copies its first week.
The success of "Mimi" marks a dramatic turnaround for Carey, 35, whose career hit the skids four years ago. Music giant EMI Group Plc paid Carey nearly $30 million to buy out her $80 million contract in January 2002 after the commercial flop of "Glitter", the soundtrack to her film debut and her first release from EMI's Virgin Records.
Overall album sales for the week ended Christmas Day were up 2 percent from the same period a year ago, following three straight weeks of double-digit declines, according to SoundScan. (Reuters)
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