sales up about 13.7% to 12.8 million copies, about 11.2% ahead of the comparable week last year. The rush of big new titles pushed overall U.S. Sales of the set fell 17.7% to 121,000 copies and the set drops to No.

“Confessions,” one of five top-10 debuts this week, ends the six-week run of Jones’ “Feels Like Home” at No. 4 on The Billboard 200, and has sold 4.3 million copies to date. Prior to “Confessions,” Usher’s best sales week came during the 2001 Christmas season, when his “8701” sold 338,000 copies. In fact, the album sports the largest sales week since June 2002, when “The Eminem Show” (Interscope) moved 1.3 million copies. To set the 2004 sales record, “Confessions” topped the 1.02 million copies sold by Norah Jones’ “Feels Like Home” (Blue Note) upon its entry last month. Kelly’s 2000 Jive album “” set the previous high-water mark for R&B male artist sales with 543,000 copies in its first week. 1 on The Billboard 200 with sales of 1.096 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, to give the singer his first chart-topping album. Usher has scored the best opening sales week ever for a male R&B artist and the best debut week of 2004 with his fifth Arista set “Confessions.” The album debuts at No.

Usher confessions album sales