Music Thread #1 For 2/24/10: It Was An Ugly Week For Album Sells...Unless Your Lady Antebellum & Sade

Without any notable premieres last week, it was a totally forgettable week for albums sales. Sade stays at the top spot for a second straight week thanks to such dreadful returns, as she moved 190,000 units to become just shy of 700K sold overall. Even though it's only ten songs and really isn't that good at all, that what name recognition among the old crowd will get you.

But the paltry sum of this week's top selling album isn't the standout fact for such a porous week . This following stat is:

ast week, the top 40 of the Billboard 200 was populated with eight new arrivals, seemingly released to capitalize on the Valentine's Day holiday. This week, with V-Day in the rearview mirror, the chart's highest debut comes from Story of the Year's "The Constant," way down at No. 42 with 14,000.

Wow. Pretty meager stuff right there.

However, nothing "meager" can be said about Lady Antebellum, as the country group becomes the first to have a 2010 released album go platinum:

As for the non-Sade titles in the top 10 this week, Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" holds at No. 2 with 144,000 (down 31%). In turn, it becomes 2010's first million selling album as it reaches 1,041,000 in only its fourth week of release. It's the first title to sell a million so early in the year since the Game's "Documentary" hit a million in the fifth week of 2005.

Still, the numbers don't lie for this week. Black Eyed Peas shot up to #3 despite failing off from last week's sales total.

The rest of the top ten in order rounds off as Gaga's "The Fame", Lil Wayne's "The Rebirth", Susan Boyle's "I Dreamed A Dream", Alicia Keys "Element of Freedom", Jaheim's "Another Round", Josh Turner's "Haywire", and Taylor Swift's "Fearless."

And that's the album sales review for this week.