'Idol' BB 200: 'Jennifer Hudson' #42 (3/21/09)

In what has been a battle for the #1 spot among Idol alums on the Billboard Top 200 chart, Jennifer Hudson continued to make things interesting by taking over for David Cook for the chart week of March 21.

Jennifer's disc sold 11k copies for the week, down 12% from the previous week. It rose five spots to #42 and has sold 656.9k to date. Cook's self-titled album, on the other hand, rose two spots to #45 despite taking a 16% sales drop. It sold 10.8k copies, good for a 1.017 million total.

Carrie Underwood was up next with her Carnival Ride at #53, up eight spots from the previous week and down only 1% in sales. It sold 9.6k for the week and has moved 2.672 million in all. David Archuleta's David Archuleta tumbled 18 spots thanks to a 24% slide in sales, selling 5.3 copies for the week. That pushes his debut's total to 659.8k.

David Foster's Hit Man CD/DVD combo saw a surprise 54% sales bump, advancing it #169-112 on the chart. It moved 5.1k units for the week and has now totaled 160.4k. Daughtry and its debut disc were up six spots to #133 despite being down 3% in sales, selling 3.9k copies for the week to make its total 4.397 million.

Melinda Doolittle's debut followed at #136, down 15 spots from the previous week. The album sold 3.8k copies, off 18% from last week, putting its total at 33.8k. And rounding out the Idol representation on the Billboard 200 was Elliott Yamin's My Kind of Holiday, which saw a huge 766% increase to 3.2k copies and a re-entry at #162. Now, this would seem very strange at first glance, but the reason his Christmas album saw such an impressive sales week in mid-March is because Circuit City closed its doors for good this past week, which led to shoppers scrambling to pick up any and all items at bargain prices. Even though it has no sold 26.7k copies, look for it to disappear next week.

Full sales figures and chart positions courtesy of 2m on Pulse as follows:

042 047 Jennifer Hudson - Jennifer Hudson 10,998 -12% 12,502 656,881
045 047 David Cook - David Cook 10,811 -16% 12,852 1,017,212
053 061 Carrie Underwood - Carnival Ride 9,628 -1% 9,748 2,671,768
106 088 David Archuleta - David Archuleta 5,258 -24% 6,890 659,794
112 169 David Foster - Hit Man... 5,118 54% 3,329 160,398
133 139 Daughtry - Daughtry 3,913 -3% 4,026 4,396,883
136 121 Melinda Doolittle - Coming Back to You 3,822 -18% 4,689 33,839
162 --- Elliott Yamin - My Kind of Holiday 3,221 766% 320 26,682

Total sales are in bold.