Jennifer Lopez Ends the Beatles’ Long Reign

The combination of a No. 1 movie and a new album was a match made in heaven for”The Wedding Planner” star Jennifer Lopez, whose sophomore album “J.Lo” finally dethroned the Beatles from the top spot on the nation’s album chart.

“J.Lo” entered the chart at No. 1 on last week’s sales of 272,000, according to SoundScan, with the Beatles’ “1” hits compilation dropping to No. 4, behind Shaggy’s “Hotshot” (214,000) and the “Save the Last Dance” soundtrack (185,000).

“I don’t think this was entirely startling, but it is a rare feat,” says Billboard magazine chart director Geoff Mayfield. “It’s hard to think of any actors or actresses who have had a No. 1 album.

“If you go the other way--singers who have become actresses--you have Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston. But talking about people who were established as actors first and singers later, I can’t think of any.”

Lopez started the week on an up note when “The Wedding Planner” came in as the weekend’s top-grossing film. The buzz--and the presence of her single “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” in the movie--were likely factors in pushing her album to a commanding lead over not only the Beatles but also the still-building Shaggy and “Save the Last Dance” albums.

“J.Lo” doesn’t appear to be in immediate danger of surrendering the top spot. LeAnn Rimes’ new “I Need You” looks to be the highest-profile release this week, but based on first-day sales it’s projected by the Best Buy chain for a modest initial-week figure of 50,000 copies nationally.

The Rimes-dominated “Coyote Ugly” soundtrack, however, is rebounding strongly now that the movie is out on video. Originally released last August, it jumped from No. 110 to 39 last week and jumps again this week to No. 23 with sales of 48,000.

In a week when most of the Top 10 albums dipped in sales over the previous week--the Beatles collection slipped from 216,000 to 173,000--”Hotshot” and “Save the Last Dance” both posted increases. Shaggy’s album was up about 5% over the previous week and “Save the Last Dance” went up 7.5%. It’s another album benefiting from a tie-in with a hit movie, in this case the nation’s No. 2 film at the box office.

The Beatles’ reign at No. 1 ended after seven straight weeks. It is the Fab Four’s 18th album to hit the top of the pops, and brought the world’s best-selling rock group ever to a total of 131 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart. Total sales of “1” now stand at 5.98 million, and should easily cross the 6 million mark next week.

Two other groups with debut albums released last week, boy band O-Town and Southern California teen girl group Dream, entered the chart back-to-back at No. 5 and 6, respectively. Both recently had top-selling singles, O-Town with “Liquid Dreams” and Dream with “He Loves U Not.”

“The only difference between us and SoundScan is O-Town,” said Sam Milicia, vice president of music purchasing for Handleman Co., a distributor that supplies more than 4,000 retailers in the U.S. O-Town’s album “is No. 5 for them and it’s our No. 2 album. It did really, really well for us. It was a surprise when we looked at the [first-day] sales on Wednesday, but it maintained through the week.”

New York rapper Ja Rule reentered the Top 10 with his “Rule 3:36” album, which landed at No. 10 on sales of 80,000, up from 70,000 a week earlier. It had entered the chart at No. 1 in October.

The remaining slots in the Top 10 were held by the “Now That’s What I Call Music, Vol. 5” compilation, Creed and Dido.

One big surprise further down the chart is the “Goin’ South” compilation album on the independent Razor & Tie label, which sold 43,000 copies last week to debut at No. 28. The album consists of vintage tracks from Southern rock groups including Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers Band and Pure Prairie League.

“Razor & Tie does what it does very well,” says Billboard’s Mayfield. “They had similar success with a hair bands [hard-rock] compilation not too long ago, and if you can do it with that, you should be able to make something like this work. I don’t know exactly what they did [to promote it], but they obviously did something that worked.”

“Stutter,” by rapper Joe featuring fellow rapper Mystikal, was the nation’s best-selling single.