The eighteenth studio album for Bruce Springsteen entitled “High Hopes” debuts at the top of the ARIA Albums Chart this week, becoming only his third No.1 album in Australia and his first No.1 in almost nineteen years.
“High Hopes” becomes the 694th No.1 album in Australia (1965 to 2014) and the 553rd for ARIA (1983 to 2014), whilst it’s also the 347th album to debut at No.1. It’s the thirty-fifth No.1 album for the Columbia label in Australia, and the first time this century that a Columbia artists has knocked off a label-mate from the top spot, as Bruce bounces Beyonce from the No.1 perch, the last such feat occurred in May 1999 when three Columbia acts knocked each other off, Ricky Martin with his self-titled album (17-May-99) followed by Human Nature with “Counting Down” (24-May) and then from the 31st of May, 1999, the “Songs from Dawson’s Creek” Soundtrack took over for six broken weeks.
Bruce Springsteen has only reached the top of the Australian charts on two previous occasions, firstly with “Born in the USA” in October 1984, initially for one week, then a further two weeks in February 1985 and finally during his 1985 tour he spent five weeks atop throughout all of April 1985, eight weeks in total. In March 1995 he debuted at the top with his first ever “Greatest Hits” collection, which stayed at No.1 for a single week. “High Hopes” becomes Bruce’s seventeenth Top 10 album in Australia and his twelfth to debut within the Top 10 (“Born in the USA” was the first at #5 in June 1984), and this is his seventh ‘Highest New Entry of the Week’ achievement too.
So Bruce Springsteen has now notched up his tenth accumulated week at No.1 in Australia (8 for Born, 1 for GH and now one more for High Hopes), placing him at equal 55th on the list of ‘Accumulated Weeks at No.1: Albums 1965-2014’ alongside The Foo Fighters, Live, Missy Higgins, Dido and Paul McCartney. It’s the second album to reach No.1 with the word ‘High’ in its title, the other being “High School Musical” (July 2006) and the only other ‘Hope’ at the top was a Slipknot album “All Hope is Gone” (Sept 2008). “High Hopes” also becomes the 253rd No.1 album by an American Artist, and the 193rd by a Male Performer, and his “Greatest Hits” set blasts back up thirty-one places to No.41 this week.
The soundtrack for the Disney film “Frozen” climbs a place to a new peak of No.2 this week, becoming the equal second highest charting Disney soundtrack in Australia, as the “Mary Poppins” album reached No.2 in 1965, whilst the only Disney No.1 album was the aforementioned “High School Musical” set in July 2006. The recent three week run at the top of the ARIA Albums Chart for the self-titled Beyonce album is over for now, as the set drops to No.3 this week, pushing last weeks No.2 album “Prism” for Katy Perry down also, to No.4.
Lorde with “Pure Heroine” and Avicii with his “True” album both drop a place this week to No.5 and No.6 respectively, but with Avicii in the country from this weekend, he will no doubt rise next week. For the first time in its 74 weeks on the charts (over three chart runs), the INXS collection “The Very Best” finally hits the Top 10, as it moves up four places to No.7 this week, having originally entered the chart back in late October 2011, plus it’s the band’s first Top 10 entry since “Definitive Collection 1979-1997” made it to No.8 back in early November 2002.
London Grammar are down a place to No.8 with their album “If You Wait”, whilst Eminem drops three places to No.9 with “The Marshall Mathers LP 2”, and returning for a ninth broken week within the Top 10, up two places to No.10 are Imagine Dragons with their “Night Visions” (HP-4) album.
NEW PEAKS & MOVERS: Two festivals are going on in Australia at the moment, one nationally, the other within a town. The Tamworth Country Music Festival helps local country albums to climb back up this week, with “The Great Country Songbook” by Troy Cassar-Daley and Adam Harvey leaping back up seventy-two places to No.16, plus Keith Urban’s “Fuse” is back up eleven places to No.39 (helped also by his American Idol Season 13 judging), and “The Story So Far” back up to No.57, whilst the Lee Kernaghan set “Beautiful Noise” returns at No.80 this week. The Big Day Out kicked off on the Gold Coast last weekend, and artists playing at the festival who benefit from the tour include “Flume” (#21), Arcade Fire with “Reflektor” (55 to 32), Rufus with “Atlas” (41 to 36), Bliss N’ Eso with “Circus in the Sky” (52 to 44), Pearl Jam and “Lightning Bolt” (73 to 61), Violent Soho and “Hungry Ghost” (94 to 70) and there are returning albums for Major Lazer with “Free the Universe” (#76) and the self-titled album for The Lumineers (#87).
DOWN DOWN: The first two of the three albums that drop out of the Top 10 this week are both former No.1 sets, with the self-titled album for X-Factor runner-up Taylor Henderson down three places to No.12 after seven weeks within the ten, one week at No.1, and also One Direction with “Midnight Memories”, which leaves after eight weeks within the Top 10 and one week at No.1, down five places to No.13 this week. The third drop-out is James Blunt with “Moon Landing”, which is down four spots to No.14 after reaching No.2 and staying within the ten for eight broken weeks. The Twelfth Man collection “Willy Nilly” is down eight places to No.22 and after peaking at No.19 last week, the soundtrack for “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is down fourteen places to No.33 this week. After a Top 20 rebound last week, the Pink collection “Greatest Hits… So Far” is back down nineteen spots to No.37 and after scoring the highest new entry last week, Kid Ink is back down thirteen places to No.38, with the “Bon Jovi Greatest Hits” set falling twelve to No.40 this week, and Haim are down six to No.48 with “Days are Gone” (only LP cert, now Gold ● in sales). Big drops out of the Top 50 include “Beautiful” for Jessica Mauboy (37 to 55), “Salute” for Little Mix (47 to 68), “The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac” (39 to 72), “Greatest Hits” for Foo Fighters (40 to 75), “Post Tropical” for James Vincent McMorrow (33 to 83) and the Blink 182 “Greatest Hits” (48 to 89), whilst leaving the Top 100 from last weeks Top 50 are “#1’s” for Michael Jackson from #38 and the self-titled set for Paramore from No.46.
Local country duo McAlister Kemp sees their third album debut at No.18 entitled “Harder to Tame”. It’s the same position that their second album debuted and peaked at in March 2012, “Country Proud”, whilst their first set “All Kinds of Tough” made it to No.93 this week in 2010 (25-Jan-10). American indie rock band Warpaint see their self-titled second studio album debut at No.35, becoming their first chart entry here, and also scoring their first, is US duo A Great Big World with their debut album “Is There Anybody Out There?” debuting at No.45 and featuring this weeks new Top 10 single “Say Something”.
Oz rock legends The Angels enter at No.46 with their thirteenth studio album entitled “Talk the Talk”, whilst they also debut at No.91 with a new “Greatest Hits” set, the bands seventh to chart. The ninth studio album for US rockers Switchfoot debuts at No.50 entitled “Fading West”. It’s the bands fifth album to chart here and now third Top 50 entry, as they’ve previously entered this area of the chart with “The Beautiful Letdown” (HP-45, peaked early April 2005, LP#4) and “Nothing is Sound” (HP-25, peaked Oct 2005, LP#5).
Lower 50: Ellie Goulding is back up eleven places to No.56 with “Halcyon Days” and the “Abba Gold” collection is also up eleven to No.60. I’ve already mentioned three of the five returning albums for this week, with the other two being “The Bones of What You Believe” (HP-13) for Chvrches at No.95 and “Babel” by Mumford and Sons at No.98.
The eighteenth film for The Coen Brothers “Inside Llewyn Davis” sees its soundtrack debut at No.73 this week, the film about the folk music scene in New York in the early 1960’s. It becomes only the second Coen Brothers soundtrack to chart in Australia, the other being the George Clooney starring film ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ which charted four times, the first time in January 2001 it reached No.23 (upon debut) and then in late March 2002, the album re-charted for the third time, reaching No.15 at the end of the month. The other soundtrack to debut is at No.94, from the TV show “Austin & Ally: Turn it Up”, their first entry here.
The eighth album for the Scottish band Mogwai is new at No.88 entitled “Rave Tapes” becoming their third album to chart here, as they have previously entered with “Mr. Beast” (HP-95, March 2006, LP#5) and “Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will” (HP-78, February 2011, LP#7). And the final new entry is new at No.99, the fifth studio album for Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings with “Give the People What They Want”, becoming their second ARIA Albums Chart entry, as the fourth set “I Learned the Hard Way” made it to No.77 in April 2010.
Gavin Ryan reports with thanks to Australian-Charts.com
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