‘Late,’ with perfect timing

LIFE has returned to the pop sales chart in the form of Norah Jones, whose third album, “Not Too Late,” arrived just in time to revive the record industry’s ailing heartbeat, selling 405,000 copies in its first week to debut at No. 1.

It’s the highest first-week figure of a lackluster 2007, and the highest since Jay-Z’s “Kingdom Come” posted 680,000 in November. It was the sultry singer’s third consecutive entrance at the top of the chart, although it came up short of the 1.02 million first-week sales posted in 2004 by its predecessor, “Feels Like Home.” Still, “Not Too Late” recently set a record for the most pre-orders at Amazon.com and sold more copies in the U.S. last week than the next five bestselling albums combined, according to the Nielsen SoundScan sales monitoring service.

Among those are “Katharine McPhee,” the debut album from the “American Idol” runner-up. The San Fernando Valley resident’s collection sold 116,000 copies last week, making her the eighth contestant from “AI” to place an album in the Top 10 out of the gate. Another “Idol” contestant, Chris Daughtry, is right behind McPhee with “Daughtry,” at No. 3 on sales of 77,000 copies in its 11th week on the chart.

“A New Journey,” the latest from Celtic Woman, entered at No. 4 with sales of 71,000, the Irish quintet’s highest chart position and best first-week sales figure.

Fall Out Boy’s “Infinity on High,” which was released Tuesday, is the leading contender to top next week’s album chart.