Album sales show McCartney still in demand

By Geoff Mayfield

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - Paul McCartney has the answer to that question he posed so mirthfully 40 years ago. Music fans still need him, and are willing to feed him at 64. With his new release, he realized the biggest sales week of any of his studio albums in Nielsen SoundScan history.

"Memory Almost Full," the first album in his much-heralded deal with Starbucks/Concord label Hear Music, fetches first-week sales of 161,000, good for No. 3 on the Billboard 200 behind career-best weeks for radio faves T-Pain and Rihanna.

From 1991 (when the big chart began using SoundScan data) through to "Memory," McCartney -- who turns 65 June 18 -- has placed six studio albums on The Billboard 200. His best prior SoundScan week belonged to 1997 set "Flaming Pie," which began with 121,000 copies when it bowed at No. 2.

As a solo artist, McCartney has twice launched albums with SoundScan sums exceeding 200,000, the biggest belonging to the opener of live set "Back in the U.S. Live 2002," which clocked 224,000 during the holiday selling season of 2002. Retrospective set "Wingspan," which mingled solo hits with ones by his band Wings, began with 221,000 in 2001.

Of course, compilations by his other band, the Beatles, garnered even fatter frames, as six Fab Four titles have had bigger weeks than McCartney's solo works. Most notably their hits package "1" sold 1.3 million during Christmas week of 2000, and "Anthology 1" -- on the heels of a multi-night ABC documentary -- began with 855,000 during Thanksgiving week of 1995.

The new album starts with 75 percent more sales than his last solo outing, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard," which began with 92,000 at No. 6 in 2005.

A good chunk of the first-week sales for "Memory" come from Starbucks coffee shops. The chain says that the album's June 5 arrival marked the largest single-day total by any album in Starbucks history. A dissection of SoundScan's non-traditional sector suggests that Starbucks accounted for 47 percent of the record's first week.

Reuters/Billboard