This Year, Buzz Doesn’t Equal Sales

Question: What do the Smashing Pumpkins and Marilyn Manson have in common, aside from recent news-making antics (the Pumpkins fired their managers, and Manson was accused of siccing his bodyguards on a journalist)?

Answer: Both acts’ latest albums--two of the most talked-about releases in recent months--haven’t sold up to expectations.

Those and other disappointments are the most interesting aspect of the pop album sales for the year to date. Things up at the top are pretty dull.

The “Titanic” soundtrack is still steaming ahead, having passed the 9-million mark to set a record for single-year sales (since SoundScan started keeping track in 1991). The previous record: 7.4 million for Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” in 1996. This year’s runner-up is Celine Dion’s “Let’s Talk About Love”--featuring the “Titanic” hit “My Heart Will Go On”--with about 5.2 million.

Rounding out the year’s Top 10 so far are a bland bunch of soundtracks (“City of Angels” and “Armageddon” joining “Titanic”) and three mainstream pop collections (Backstreet Boys and Savage Garden joining Dion), with one entry from country (Shania Twain), one from hip-hop (Will Smith) and one from light rock (Matchbox 20). The only one up there with a real edge is the Beastie Boys.

Farther down is a group of rock releases, led by Korn (just over the million mark) and a flock of underachievers all stuck roughly between 500,000 and 1 million sales: Manson, the Pumpkins, Hole and Garbage.

“The rock audience is so fragmented now that it’s hard to reach it,” says Tom Overby, head of special projects for the Best Buy retail chain. “I saw a couple of Pearl Jam concerts and the excitement was great and I remember thinking that rock is anything but dead. But why it isn’t translating into record sales I don’t know.”

The Beastie Boys, with “Hello Nasty,” are the one act that has brought it all together, he says, a feat that he believes hasn’t received its due notice.

“With that one you can get a good read on the entire marketplace and who you’re selling records to,” he says. “But it seems that it’s been pretty quiet for sales of 3 million.”

Overby points to two other building hits to watch for trends: the Offspring’s “Americana” and Barenaked Ladies’ “Stunt.” As dissimilar as the sounds are, they have a common bond.

“The Beastie Boys, Offspring and Barenaked Ladies all have a lot of personality and are fun,” he says. “And they’re intelligent.” Manson, he notes, has personality, but isn’t perceived as fun.

On the flip side, there are the albums written off for dead only to show renewed life. Foremost among them: Will Smith’s “Big Willie Style” and Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” which were considered disappointments in the weeks after their release. Today they stand as unqualified smashes, with sales in the 2.5-million range.

ABORTED TAKEOFF: A Stone Temple Pilots reunion nearly got off the ground as the inaugural event in the reopening of the remodeled Viper Room, planned as a benefit for the Musicians’ Assistance Program on Jan. 7. But the band, apparently wary of putting a bright spotlight on its first show together in more than a year and a half, decided to pass on the offer. Band management would not comment, but sources close to the situation say that the Pilots, with original singer Scott Weiland, will soon start work on a new album with plans for summer release.

The band split last year with Weiland, whose drug problems had hindered their touring plans. Weiland recorded a solo album, while the three other members recorded with a new singer under the name Talk Show. Neither album sold well, and Weiland’s tour was cut short when he was arrested in New York for drug possession. He served three months in rehab and is on three years’ probation.

BOLDLY GO: You can either moan in regret or sigh in relief that William Shatner’s recent experience recording with Ben Folds for a track on the latter’s new Fear of Pop side project hasn’t inspired Capt. Kirk to resume the recording career that, in its first incarnation, provided several chestnuts for Rhino Records’ “Golden Throats” series.

“No, I don’t have ambitions of that kind,” Shatner says, recalling his “Star Trek”-era album “The Transformed Man,” which featured his recitations of such nuggets as “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.”

But there is talk of his teaming with Folds, the leader of Ben Folds Five, to perform the Fear of Pop cut “In Love” on a talk show. And Shatner also notes that in the new independent film “Free Enterprise,” in which he plays a man trying to develop a one-man musical version of “Julius Caesar,” he appears in a music video doing a rap version of the “friends, Romans, countrymen” speech.

As for the “Golden Throats” tag, Shatner is able to laugh along with the joke, but still stands by the work.

“The truth of the matter was ‘The Transformed Man’ was a concept album, and when you play the whole thing--and I expect from the reaction I get that the album is long since forgotten--you’re able to have the perspective that we’re having some fun with those songs,” he says.