Only four albums broke the 100,000 mark last week, and that's actually an improvement over previous weeks. The Top 200 performed well as most of the improvement came from the top ten titles (which had its best week in the last four). Overall, album sales were up 2% over the previous week. Sales for the year are down 6%.

Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics (RCA) won going away last week, selling a strong 341,000 in its first week of release. (Only 5% were digital album sales.)

There were five other debuts in the top ten. Lyfe Jennings' Phoenix (Columbia) at #2 with 135,000, Trace Adkins' Dangerous Man (Capitol Nashville) at #3 with 114,000, Cherish's Unappreciated (Capitol) at #4 with 90,000, the Cheetah Girls 2 soundtrack (Disney) at #5 with 87,000 and Obie Trice's Second Round's On Me (Interscope) at #8 with just under 74,000.

Big gainer of the week: Josh Turner's Your Man (MCA Nashville) was up 36% and rose to #17 from #25. Hinder's Extreme Behavior (Universal) also had a good week, increasing 20% and rising two spots to #19. The album was released on September 27th, 2005 and could possibly break the 500,000 mark next week if sales don't drop.

Milestones: Pussycat Dolls' PCD (Interscope) passed the two million mark, and NOW 22 (Columbia) passed one million scans (in only six weeks).

It was a big week for big second-week fades: Slayer nosedived 69%, Breaking Benjamin tanked 61%, Hellogoodbye dropped 61%, Rick Ross faded 58%, Cassie dropped 59% and Steve Holy was down 42%.