He’s just a gigolo, and everywhere he goes, David Lee Roth ain’t got no chart-topping Van Halen records. Despite an impressive 187,000 copies sold, the band’s new album ‘A Different Kind of Truth‘ was kept from the top spot in its first week by Adele‘s unstoppable ’21,’ which enjoyed a huge Grammy-week bounce, moving nearly a quarter of a million units in its 50th week on the chart.
It’s a little bit of history repeating for “Diamond Dave,” whose last collection of new material with the band, ’1984,’ also topped out at No. 2 thanks to Michael Jackson‘s ‘Thriller.’ Analysts had predicted that the race between ‘Truth’ and ’21′ would be a little tighter, but between keeping ’21′ at No. 1 and sweeping the Grammys with six awards, this is most definitely Adele’s week.
Still, as Vintage Vinyl News points out, we shouldn’t shed any tears for Van Halen. Selling 187,000 copies of anything is no mean feat in the current industry climate; record sales are down 50 percent since the band moved 191,000 copies of their album ‘III’ back in 1998, and now they’re a — gulp — heritage act.
And speaking of heritage acts, this was also a pretty good week for Paul McCartney, whose new collection of pop standards, ‘Kisses on the Bottom,’ sold a healthy 75,000 copies — well below the 161,000 he moved in his first week with his last studio album, 2007′s ‘Memory Almost Full,’ but still good enough for a probable No. 5 bow.