On the night before Christmas, there actually was a mouse stirring. It was Mickey watching Josh Groban crush his dreams of back-to-back year-end bestsellers.
For much of the year, Disney was on the verge of accomplishing an incredible feat. The original High School Musical finished 2006 as the bestselling album of the year (a first for a TV soundtrack), and High School Musical 2 was on target for an encore performance. But then Santa Winfrey got behind Josh Groban's Noël, and the holiday disc jingle-belled its way right past HSM2 to become the bestselling album of 2007.
According to the year-end report issued today by Nielsen SoundScan, Noël was the year's top-selling album with 3.7 million copies. HSM2 followed at number two with 2.96 million copies.
Noël only managed to debut at number 10 when it first entered the charts mid-October. By that time, the summer-released HSM2 had already spent four weeks at number one—a 2007 best, at the time—and would only spend three weeks outside the Top 10 for the rest of the year. In fact, just three weeks ago, HSM2 was still in the lead as the year's bestselling album.
Noël got a big bump in November, however, when Groban appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and then again on Behind the Scenes at Oprah's Favorite Things Show. Groban quickly booked other prime-time television performances, and along with repeats of Oprah, the seven-week-old Noël reached the top of the charts in late November and stayed there for the rest of the year. The disc sold about 2.6 million copies in December alone.
Noël is the first holiday album to top the year-end list, which Billboard started publishing 51 years ago. The album's five-week run at number one, also a 2007 best, set a new record for the most consecutive chart-topping weeks for a holiday album, beating the 50-year-old Elvis' Christmas Album record of three weeks. In fact, no holiday album had even topped the Billboard 200 since Kenny G's Miracles: A Holiday Album in 1994, which is also the last holiday album to make the year-end Top 10.
On top of all this, Noël and Mary J. Blige's Growing Pains battled it out in the final sales week of 2007, combining for nearly 1.4 million albums sold. Together they helped make that week the biggest in SoundScan history with total music sales in excess of 58.4 million units.
While the Disney Channel wound up losing the top spot, the Mouse House actually had two top-ten finishers. In addition to HSM2, the Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus soundtrack sold 2.49 million copies to finish at number six. Thanks to continued sales of her first soundtrack, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus was also the number two all-around bestselling artist, following Groban.
The Eagles' long-awaited reunion album, Long Road Out of Eden, finished third, selling just over 2.6 million copies. As a Wal-Mart exclusive, the disc was initially ineligible for SoundScan sales tracking. A last-minute rule change in early November allowed the album to debut at number one—over Britney Spears—with the year's biggest sales week for a rock act.
Though released in 2006, a trio of albums still made the 2007 year-end list. Daughtry's self-titled album sold 2.5 million copies at number five, Fergie's The Dutchess sold 2.06 million copies at eight, and Taylor Swift's self-titled debut sold 1.95 million copies at nine.
The year's remaining Top 10 albums included Alicia Keys' As I Am at four (2.54 million copies), Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight at seven (2.1 million) and Kanye West's Graduation at 10 (1.89 million).
Even though Noël was the year's top album, it didn't even crack the Top 10 on the Digital Albums list. Maroon 5's It Won't Be Soon Before Long topped that chart with 252,000 copies. Overall, digital album sales reached 50 million copies in 2007, a 53 percent increase from '06.
Soulja Boy's rookie smash "Crank That" topped the Digital Songs chart with 2.9 million downloads, followed by the Plain White Ts' "Hey There Delilah" with 2.57 million. Fergie landed two Top 10 songs with "Big Girls Don't Cry" at three (2.5 million copies) and "Glamorous" at nine (2.17 million), making her the year's all-around top digital seller. "Big Girls Don't Cry" was also the most played song on the radio, with 381,000 detections.
In '06, Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" was the only song to sell more than 2 million digital copies, while nine different songs accomplished this feat last year. All told, more than 840 million digital tracks were sold last year, up 45 percent, while 43 million of those were purchased in the final week of 2007, setting a new single-week record.
There were also 220 million ringtone purchases in 2007, resulting in $567 million in sales. T-Pain's "Buy U a Drank" led all ringtone sales with over 2.3 million units.
Though total album sales declined a whopping 15 percent from last year (cue the groan from the record industry), there was something of a silver lining: Digital downloads helped overall music purchases reach a record 1.4 billion units. This marks the third straight year of 10-digit sales, following 1 billion units sold in 2005 and 1.2 billion in 2006.
Finally, Shania Twain's Come On Over continues to rule the Top 10 list for albums released in the SoundScan era, which dates back to early '91. While no album changed its position in the Top 10, Metallica's self-titled album continues to inch toward the top spot. While almost 600,000 copies separated the albums at the end of '06, Metallica now trails Come On Over by just 370,000 discs (15.45 million to 15.08 million). With a new Metallica album and tour slated for '08, Metallica might reach that top spot in the not so distant future.
Here's a recap of the Top 10 bestselling albums of 2008, per Nielsen SoundScan:
1. Noël, Josh Groban—3.7 million copies
2. High School Musical 2 soundtrack—3 million
3. Long Road Out of Eden, the Eagles—2.6 million
4. As I Am, Alicia Keys—2.54 million
5. Daughtry, Daughtry—2.5 million
6. Hannah Montana 2/Meet Miley Cyrus—2.49 million
7. Minutes to Midnight, Linkin Park—2.1 million
8. Dutchess, Fergie—2.06 million
9. Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift—1.95 million
10. Graduation, Kanye West—1.89 million