Kevin Mazur/WireImage.comApparently cold is the new hot.
A week after becoming the first British rock group in 20 years to top the Hot 100, Coldplay just took over the Billboard 200 with the biggest sales week for a rock act since, well, the band's last album.
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends ruled the week ended Sunday by selling 721,000 copies, per Nielsen SoundScan.
No rock group has rung up this many copies since Coldplay's X&Y sold 737,000 first-week units in 2005. The only acts to come close are the Eagles (711,000) and Linkin Park (623,000), both last year. To find a bigger week, we gotta turn back the calendars to 2004, when U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb debuted with 840,000 copies.
Coldplay's latest also set a new record by selling 288,000 digital copies, the most ever and more than double the previous record (139,000 copies) set by Jack Johnson's Sleep Through the Static earlier this year. Not surprisingly, Viva la Vida was the biggest preorder in iTunes history.
On the other side of the pond, Viva la Vida entered its second week at No. 1 as the U.K.'s fastest-selling album of the year. The title track also reached No. 1 there. Elsewhere, the album has registered chart-topping bows in Japan, Australia, Canada, France and Germany.
Coldplay, set to perform on tonight's Daily Show with Jon Stewart, launches its North American tour July 14 in Los Angeles.
After last week's million-copy debut, Lil Wayne slipped to No. 2, selling another 309,000 copies of Tha Carter III. Prior to last week, only three albums this year sold more copies in their first weeks.
In a year of slumping sales, Weezy and Coldplay just delivered one of the biggest one-two punches in music history. There's only been one other instance in which albums debuted with 700,000-plus copies in back-to-back weeks: Britney Spears' Oops!...I Did It Again (1.3 million) and Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP (1.8 million) on May 24 and 31, 2000.
This week's chart also chalked up more cheese for the Mouse. The Jonas Brothers-led Camp Rock soundtrack sold 188,000 copies at No. 3 following the telefilm's weekend debut on the Disney Channel. The cable movie drew nearly 9 million viewers, trailing only High School Musical 2 as the most-watched original production in the channel's history. A sequel is already in the works.
Madonna fave Katy Perry smooched her way to No. 9 as One of the Boys sold 47,000 copies. Getting her start as Christian popster Katy Hudson, she has broken through by belting out tunes like "Ur So Gay," "Waking Up in Vegas" and the Digital Tracks chart-topper "I Kissed a Girl."
With its first new album in half a decade, the Offspring sold 46,000 copies of Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace at No. 10. The veteran O.C. punks, who benefit from the rock hit "Hammerhead," only managed a No. 30 bow for 2003's Splinter.
While the original was released in May 2007, a reissue of Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad with three new tracks helped skyrocket the album 117 spots to No. 7, selling another 63,000 copies.
Just missing the top 10, Judas Priest sold 42,000 copies of Nostradamus at No. 11. Despite such iconic metal hits as "Breaking the Law," "Living After Midnight" and "You've Got Another Thing Comin'," the Priest never before climbed this high on the Billboard 200.
Other notable debuts included Blood Raw's My Life: The True Testimony at No. 30, 2 Pistols' Death Before Dishonor at No. 33 and Wolf Parade's At Mount Zoomer in the No. 46 spot. Further down, the Hold Steady managed a No. 170 bow with the digital release Stay Positive.
Despite Coldplay's big week, overall sales were down more than 10 percent compared to last week and nearly 7 percent compared to the same sales week last year, when Bon Jovi topped the charts.
Next week, watch for Oscar-winning rappers Three 6 Mafia to see if it's still hard out there for a pair of pimps.
To recap, the top 10 albums were as follows:
1. Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay
2. Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne
3. Camp Rock soundtrack, various
4. Now That's What I Call Music! 28, various
5. Definition of Real, Plies
6. Here I Stand, Usher
7. Good Girl Gone Bad, Rihanna
8. Indestructible, Disturbed
9. One of the Boys, Katy Perry
10. Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, the Offspring