Linkin Park’s album handily disables Tank

ANEMIC sales this year have hammered home the message that the record business is losing a lot of its punch, but Linkin Park has proved it’s still possible to post impressive numbers at the cash register. The band sold 623,000 copies of its new “Minutes to Midnight” album last week, the highest first-week total of 2007, placing it easily at No. 1 on the national album chart. Nearly 25% of those were digital sales.

It’s also the best debut-week figure since Jay-Z’s “Kingdom Come” sold 680,000 in December. Still, even Linkin Park couldn’t completely buck the overall trend of sliding sales -- “Minutes” couldn’t equal the inaugural week numbers the group posted in 2003 with “Meteora,” which sold 810,000 copies out of the gate.

The drop to No. 2 is a big one: R&B; singer Tank rolls in behind Linkin Park with “Sex, Love & Pain” after selling 103,000 copies, the only other album to crack the 100K mark. Last week’s top seller, Michael Buble’s “Call Me Irresponsible,” falls to No. 3 with sales of 88,000.

Wilco arrives at No. 4 with “Sky Blue Sky,” its highest chart entry and its biggest sales week, just short of Buble at 87,000 copies. Gretchen Wilson’s third album, “One of the Boys,” enters at No. 5 on the pop chart, and tops the country ranking with sales of 73,000 copies, a considerable slide from the 264,000 first-week sales of her previous album, 2005’s “All Jacked Up.”

Will Maroon 5’s new one, “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long,” released Tuesday, have enough oomph to knock Linkin Park out of the top spot next week? It won’t be long before we find out.

randy.lewis@latimes.com