Mumford & Sons' Babel Sells 600K Copies In First Week
October 3, 2012
Mumford & Sons
Folk-rockers Mumford & Sons have made history, as their sophomore record Babel nabbed the best-selling album sales week of 2012. The British quartet sold 600,000 copies of Babel in its first week in stores, according to Nielsen SoundScan. This easily tops Justin Bieber's Believe, which sold 374,000 copies in its first week earlier this year. Babel is also the first #1 album for Glassnote Records. Billboard notes that Mumford & Sons also had the best opening sales week for a Rock record since AC/DC debuted at #1 with Black Ice in 2008.
Babel also gives RED Distribution their largest sales week ever, and the first #1 album distributed by RED since Radiohead's In Rainbows in 2008. Additionally, Mumford & Sons have the second-largest sales week overall in 2012, after Adele's 21 earlier in the year. It is also the second-largest digital sales week for an album in history, with 420,000 downloads of Babel. This trails Lady Gaga's Born This Way, which sold 662,000 copies digitally in its opening week, though this amount was famously boosted by an Amazon MP3 discounted price.
Green Day's Uno!, the first of the rockers' trilogy of new records, debuts at #2 with 139,000 copies, while No Doubt's Push And Shove debuts at #3 with 115,000 sold. It is the band's first new album in over a decade, since the 2001 release of Rock Steady.
Rapper Lupe Fiasco debuts at #5 with the awkwardly-titled Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album Pt. 1, which sold 89,000 copies. EDM superstar deadmau5 debuts at #6 with <album title goes here>, giving the Canadian DJ his best sales week ever, moving 58,000 copies.
Last week's #1 album, P!nk's The Truth About Love, lands at #4, while the G.O.O.D. MusicCruel Summer collection is at #7, followed by Dave Matthews Band's Away From The World at #8, Little Big Town's Tornado at #9 and Battle Born from The Killers at #10.
"Begin Again,"another new song from Taylor Swift's upcoming album Red, debuts at #1 on the Digital Songs chart with 299,000 downloads. It is Swift's fifth #1 digital single.