‘Now’ No. 1 again; a first for Shakira

NEARLY as predictably as Santa shimmying down chimneys on Dec. 24, another “Now That’s What I Call Music” hits compilation has taken over the No. 1 slot on the national album sales chart in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

“Now, Vol. 20,” a stylistically varied assemblage of recent hits from performers including Missy Elliott, the Black Eyed Peas, Kelly Clarkson and Keith Urban, sold 158,000 more copies last week to return to the top spot. It debuted at No. 1 in early November after selling 378,000 in its first week in stores and has now sold 1.2 million copies.

The Top 10 debuts this week were teen R&B; singer Chris Brown, whose “Chris Brown” album sold 154,000 copies to land at No. 2, and Colombian rocker Shakira, whose new English-language album “Oral Fixation, Vol. 2,” entered at No. 5 on sales of 128,000.

It’s her second Top 5 debut this year, following the Spanish-language “Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1” in June.

That makes Shakira the only musician to chart Top 5 debuts in two languages during the same calendar year.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart reported Wednesday that it has now sold 1 million copies of Garth Brooks’ chain-exclusive box set “The Limited Series,” which went on sale Nov. 25.

But the company has chosen not to allow Nielsen SoundScan to announce monitored sales data on the six-disc set, so the figure can’t be verified the way other album sales are.