Hunger Games Soundtrack Looks To Take Num 1 Next Week, Diggy 20-23k

Universal Republic Soundtrack Will Break Columbia’s #1 Streak at an Even Dozen

March 21, 2012

Columbia’s chart-topping run, which began in January with Adele, continued with Bruce Springsteen and culminated this week with U.K. boy band One Direction, will end at 12.
Universal Republic’s T Bone Burnett-produced Hunger Games soundtrack, which features the first track by Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars and includes tracks by Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, Miranda Lambert, Kid Cudi and Maroon 5, among others, will debut at #1 on the HITS album chart next Tuesday with an estimated 150-175k in sales. The highly anticipated movie version of the first of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy of best-selling dystopian young adult novels opens this Friday.

The following week will be UMG’s as well, with the release of Madonna’s first Interscope album, MDNA.

Columbia will have the week’s other top debut in The Shins’ fine, critically kudo’ed Port of Morrow, slated for between 65-75k, which is substantially less than their last for indie Sub Pop, 2007’s Wincing the Night Away, but better than Broken Bells, leader James Mercer’s collaboration with Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton, which sold 49k on its first week in March 2010.

Controversial L.A. rap collective Odd Future arrives with their much-ballyhooed Columbia/RED bow, the curiously titled The Odd Future Tape Vol. 2, which looks set to sell between 35-40k.

SRC/Universal Republic Canadian R&B singer Melanie Fiona returns with The MF Life, her sophomore follow-up to 2009’s The Bridge, with first-week estimates in the 23-27k range.

Concord Best New Grammy winner Esperanza Spaulding’s fourth album, and first since her award, Radio Music Society, should do between 20-23k.

Atlantic rapper Diggy, whose real name is Daniel Dwayne Simmons III, is the fourth child of Run DMC’s Joe “Rev Run” Simmons (brother of Russell) and starred in the MTV reality series, Run’s House. Unexpected Arrival, his major label debut after a series of independently released mixtapes, is also on target for 20-23k.

19/BNA recording artist Casey James, the hard-living singer-songwriter from Cool, TX, who finished third on the 2009 American Idol, is looking at 12-15k in first-week sales for his self-titled debut.



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