Daft Punk debut at No.1 with their fourth studio album entitled “Random Access Memories”, which debuts with a Platinum (▲) sales certification, the last album to do that was One Direction with “Take Me Home” back on the 19-Nov-2012.
Daft Punk. Photo by Tim Cashmere.
The group also returns to the Top 100 with three older releases, “Alive 2007” (HP-14, peaked Feb 2008) at No.60, their only other Top 10 album comes in one place lower at No.61, “Discovery” (HP-7, peaked March 2001) and back in at No.85 is “Musique Vol.1 (1993-2005) (HP-47, peaked April 2008). And Daft Punk are now only the second act from France to hit No.1 on the Australian album charts, but the first French group (or duo) to do so. The only other French act to hit No.1 here was Paul Mauriat who did it in June 1968 with “Blooming Hearts” (2 weeks at No.1) featuring his international No.1 single “Love is Blue”.
“Random Access Memories” is the 671st No.1 album in Australia (1965 to 2013) and the 530th for ARIA (1983 to 2013). It’s also the tenth consecutive No.1 debut since February this year, and the 32nd No.1 album for the Columbia label, their last being John Mayer’s “Born and Raised” (4-June-2012). It’s the first time that the words ‘Random’ and ‘Access’ have appeared in a No.1 album, but the second for ‘Memories’, which appeared in Enya’s “The Memories of Trees – Greatest Hits” (Dec 1995).
There entire top four this week are all new entries, and we have to go back to the last century (30-Nov-1997) to see when this last happened. That week we had debuts with #1 Celine Dion “Let’s Talk About Love”, #2 Metallica “Reload”, #3 Hanson “Snowed In”, #4 Regurgitator “Unit”, and you can see the chart here.
Debuting at No.2 is New York band The National with their sixth album “Trouble Will Find Me”, becoming their second album to chart here, and their first to reach our Top 10. Their fifth album “High Violet” debuted and initially peaked at No.41 in May 2010, later coming back in late December of 2010 and hitting a new peak of No.29 in mid-January 2011.
Local act The Cat Empire debut with their sixth studio album this week entitled “Steal the Light” and it debuts at No.3 becoming their fourth Top 10 entry. Their previous three Top 10 albums have all reached numbers 1, 2 or 3, so this album is no departure from their previous chart heights. “Two Shoes” in 2005 went to No.1 for a week, October 2007’s “So Many Nights” debuted and peaked at No.2 and their last chart entry, July 2010’s “Cinema” came in at No.3 upon entry.
The fourth and final Top 10 (and Top 4) debut this week is the fourth studio album for 30 Seconds to Mars entitled “Love, Lust, Faith + Dreams”, and it debuts at No.4, becoming their first Top 10 album in Australia. In November 2006 they first charted with their second album “A Beautiful Lie”, which made it to No.20, and then in June 2007 their self-titled debut album made an appearance, charting as high as No.89. Their third set “This is War” initially debuted and peaked at No.36 in December of 2009, but in July 2010 it re-entered the charts and climbed to a new peak of No.18 during their tour here. So far the first track to chart from this new album was “Up in the Air” (HP-68, April 2013).
“The Great Gatsby” Soundtrack is only down one place to No.5 this week, and with the film’s première happening in Sydney last week, and it opening in cinemas at the end of May, it will most likely go up when the film opens. Also down one spot to No.6 is Bruno Mars’ “Unorthodox Jukebox”, whilst Michael Buble’s five week run at the top with “To Be Loved” dramatically ends with the album down six places to No.7 this week. After a big tumble last week, Rudimental are back up a couple of places to No.8 with “Home”, and last weeks highest new entry from Agnetha Faltskog, “A” is down six places to No.9 this week. Rounding out the Top 10, down four places, is Pink with “The Truth About Love”, which has spent its entire 36 weeks in the Top 100 inside the Top 10.
NEW PEAKS & MOVERS: With tickets being promoted for the Bon Jovi tour later in the year, their “Greatest Hits” set is back up eight places to No.20, Russell Morris is back up three places to No.23 with “Sharkmouth” (now Gold ● in sales). Returning to the Top 50, up eighteen places to No.40 is Alt-J with “An Alternative Wave”, and Emeli Sande is up ten places to No.41 with “Our Version of Events” (now ●). “March Fires” for Birds of Tokyo jumps up nine places to No.44 and Seth Sentry leaps back up fifty-four places to No.46 with “This is Tomorrow”.
DOWN DOWN: With four new entries to the Top 10, we say goodbye from the ten to “Modern Vampires of the City” (1 week, HP-7) for Vampire Weekend, down to No.12, “Golden” (2 weeks, HP-8×2) for Lady Antebellum to No.13, “Time” (2 weeks, HP-6) for Rod Stewart to No.15 and falling sixteen places to No.18 after five weeks inside the Top 10, peaking last week at No.2 is the “Greatest Hits” for Ricky Martin. Former The Voice series 1 finalists Jason Owen and Rachael Leahcar fall to No.28 and No.38 respectively, whilst “Demi” for Demi Lovato is down sixteen places from last weeks debut to No.30 this week. Ms Mr fall thirteen places to No.35 with “Secondhand Rapture” and down fifteen spots to No.36 (and now 2x▲) are The Bee Gees with their “Mythology” box set.
With The Seekers tour on hold until Judith Durham gets better, their “Golden Jubilee Album” tumbles this week, down thirty-three places to No.50 and falling twenty-six spots to No.53 are the Steve Miller Band with their “Complete Greatest Hits”. Another collection, in the form of Pink’s “Greatest Hits… So Far” is down twenty-two spots to No.58 and after a couple of weeks back inside the Top 50, “18 Hits” for Abba is down twenty-two places also, this week to No.63. “The Sapphires” Soundtrack falls thirty-two places to No.66, and leaving the Top 50 for the first time in it’s 122 week Top 100 run is Adele’s “21”, down twenty-one places this week to No.69. “The Voice 2013 Final 32” album tumbles thirty-two places to No.74 and the “Les Miserables” soundtrack tumbles thirty-seven spots to No.75, whereas worse off is Andre Rieu, who’s “Mother & Child” set drops sixty-six places to No.82, almost as bad as Emma Pask who is down sixty-five spots to No.97 with her 2011 album “Some Other Spring”. Anthony Callea is down forty-seven places to No.92 with “Thirty” and Bryan Adams falls fifty-five places to No.94 with “His Greatest Hits”, and falling out of the Top 100 this week from the Top 50 last week is Josh Groban with “All That Echoes” from No.43 and leaving from No.50 is Natalie Maines’ “Mother” album. Remember too that these are sales now AFTER Mother’s Day, so some mum-centric titles will fall hard.
This years Eurovision Song Contest was held in Malmo, Sweden last weekend, and the double album featuring the performers from the competition debuts at No.16 this week, one place lower (#15) than the 2012 edition debuted at (4-June-2012), with this album becoming only the second from the contest to make the Australian charts. Denmark was the winner on the night and their song “Only Teardrops” debuts at No.47 this week for Emmelie de Forest.
The third album for local rock act Airbourne debuts at No.17 entitled “Black Dog Barking”. This debut beats the peaks of their first two albums, “Runnin’ Wild” (HP-21, July 2007) and “No Guts. No Glory.” (HP-19, March 2010). English singer Gabrielle Aplin enters at No.22 with her debut album “English Rain”, and scoring their second chart entry (with their second album too) are Jinja Safari, their self-titled album coming in at No.27, with their debut set “Locked by Land” having only reached No.53 back in November 2011.
US rock band Escape the Fate take their fourth album into our charts at No.34 this week entitled “Ungrateful”, becoming their third album to chart here. They first charted back in October 2008 with “This War is Ours” (HP-33), and then their self-titled third album made it to No.58 in November 2010. And the final Top 50 entry of the week is from The Dillinger Escape Plan who take their fifth album “One of us is the Killer” into the charts at No.45, beating the No.53 peak of their only other ARIA chart entry, album #4 “Option Paralysis” (April 2010).
Lower 50: The previous Bring Me the Horizon No.1 album “There is a Heaven…” stayed in the entire Top 100 for four weeks, but this week their second No.1 “Sempiternal” is back up ten places to No.61 in it’s eighth week in the charts. Guns N’ Roses see their “Greatest Hits” collection back up twelve places to No.56 and Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die” is back up thirty places to No.59 this week. Major Lanze is back up fourteen places to No.65 with “Free the Universe”, and the only new peak within the entire Top 100 is at No.70, “Bad Blood” for Bastille”. The other returning albums to the Top 100 this week (apart from the aforementioned Daft Punk albums) are “Up All Night” for One Direction at No.83, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” for Kendrick Lamar at No.95 and “The Very Best of The Eagles” at 100.
The final new entry for the week comes in at No.86, “Love is Everything” for US country singer George Strait. It’s his 27th studio album, and only his third to chart here in Australia, having placed one album on the charts in the past three decades. His sixteenth album “Carrying Your Love with Me” climbed to No.45 in May 1997, then in July 2003 his twenty-first album “Honkytonkville” crept into the charts at No.95.
Gavin Ryan reports with thanks to Australian-Charts.com
The ARIA Chart is updated every Sunday at 6pm
