MJ CHART WATCH

It’s now more than two weeks since the world awoke to the shock news that the King Of Pop, Michael Jackson, had died. Since then, he’s been topping charts the world over with his albums and occupying a decent number of charts positions with his singles. With more stock of Michael’s albums arriving into stores in the past week, more copies were whisked from store shelves. Here’s our Michael Jackson sales wrap for the week;
SINGLES : With his albums arriving back into retail stores this week, demand for digital copies of Michael’s singles subsided somewhat. Last week, he occupied an incredible 35% of the ARIA singles chart. This week it’s down slightly to 32%. So… at No.5, ‘Thriller’ is down two places – a further 7690 sales this week. ‘Black Or White’ stays put at No.6 with 6769 copies, while ‘Billie Jean’ drops to No.10 (5395 copies). ‘Man In The Mirror’ is out of the top ten in it’s second week, dropping to No.15 (4564 copies), but ‘They Don’t Really Care About Us’ bullets from No.45 last week to No.18 this week with 3973 sales. ‘Smooth Criminal’ is down to No.20 (3923 sales), ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ down too – to No.22 (3858 copies), and ‘Beat It’ was down seven places to No.24 (3724 copies).
‘You Are Not Alone’ is down three places to No.25 (3576 copies), but ‘Heal The World’ bucks the trend with a four place jump to No.26 (3535 sales). Down to No.34 this week, ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’ bags 2811 sales, while ‘Bad’ and ‘Ben’ are at Nos.37 and 38 respectively with 2528 and 2522 sales. ‘Will You Be There’ races up from No.70 to No.42 after it’s use on the memorial concert (2284 copies), but ‘Rock With You’ drops nine places to No.45 (2220 sales). At No.50 is ‘You Rock My World’ – up 15 places this week (1975 copies), ‘Remember The Time’ is down 11 to No.51 (1948 sales), while languishing in the bottom half of the top 60, there’s ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Something’ at No.58 (1638) and ‘Can You Feel It’ at No.60 (1602 copies).
Between No.60 and No.70, there’s the Jackson 5’s ‘ABC’ at No.61 (1556), ‘Human Nature’ at No.63 (1475) and ‘Blame It On The Boogie’ at No.67 (1400 sales). ‘I Want You Back’ occupies No.71 (1241 sales), ‘Dirty Diana’ is in at No.73 (1203 copies) and ‘Give In To Me’ is down to No.79 (1083 copies). The rest of the chart features; ‘Scream’ at No.80 (1077), ‘Thriller Megamix’ at No.84 (1002), ‘I’ll Be There’ at No.85 (1001), ‘Earth Song’ at No.86 (993), ‘Blood On The Dancefloor’ at No.90 (969), ‘Smile’ at No.92 (865) and ‘She’s Out Of My Life’ at No.99 (780 copies). All up, in the week following his death Michael chalked up an incredible 109,318 sales of his singles within the top 100. Last week, although down slightly to 81,180 copies, it was equally as impressive.
ALBUMS : 15 positions on the top 100 are again occupied by Michael’s music this week – ‘The Essential’ outdoing last week’s figures by almost 5000 more as stock was pressed and began arriving back into stores. All but a few of Michael’s albums witnessed a sales boost as shelves were re-stocked. Eight positions out of the top 20 this week belong to MJ, eleven out of the top 50.

No.01 : The Essential (24,035 copies)
No.02 : #1s (15,909 copies)
No.03 : Thriller (13,869 copies)
No.06 : King Of Pop (9117 copies)
No.13 : Bad (4600 copies)
No.14 : Dangerous (4415 copies)
No.17 : HIStory (3949 copies)
No.19 : Off The Wall (3667 copies)
No.25 : Off The Wall/Thriller (2671 copies)
No.28 : Bad/Dangerous (2075 copies)
No.37 : Invincible (1647 copies)
No.52 : The Motown Years 50 (966 copies)
No.71 : The Very Best Of The Jacksons And The Jackson 5 (678 copies)
No.82 : Can You Feel It – The Jacksons Collection (562 copies)
No.90 : Dangerous/Dangerous The Short Films (490 copies)

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