Dixie Chicks rebound with their latest release
THE Dixie Chicks, which has endured a wartime experience uncommon in pop music, has the No. 1 album in the country this week as its rock-leaning “Taking the Long Way” debuts at the top of the national chart after selling 562,000 copies in its first week.
It was one of the best sales weeks by an album this year and indicates that the trio remains commercially viable despite the backlash from country fans and radio after singer Natalie Maines made disparaging comments about President Bush on the eve of the war in Iraq.
The debut total fell short of the group’s best (the Chicks’ 2002 album “Home” sold 780,000 in its debut).
“High School Musical,” the Disney Channel movie soundtrack and sleeper hit of the year, finished at No. 2 this week with 175,000 copies sold and has topped 2.2 million in sales since its release in January. Right behind it, at No. 3, “American Idol Season 5: Encores” sold 154,000 copies in its first week.
Blink-182 singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge is back on the charts in his new outfit, Angels & Airwaves, whose first CD, “We Don’t Need to Whisper,” debuts at No. 4 on sales of 127,000 copies.
Puerto Rican reggaeton star Don Omar’s “King of Kings” sold 68,000 copies in its first week and enters at No. 7.
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