With a Bullet: Today's Charts

With her 'Volta' album debuting at No. 9 on the charts this week, Bjork, officially known (with all the proper diacritical geegaws) as Björk Guðmundsdóttir, not only had her highest-charting first week but also her highest U.S. chart position ever. The Icelandic songbird didn't go it alone -- Timbaland, Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons and Congolese combo Konono No. 1 all contributed to the lofty inaugural placing of her sixth studio LP, which sold a respectable 43,000 copies.

• Political activist and film director Barbra Streisand was also once a singer. Of hits. As she is once again, with her new album, 'Live Concert 2006,' debuting at No. 7, with 60,000 in sales. But wait a cotton' pickin', chicken pluckin', cousin kissin' minute: 'Live Concert 2006'?! Didn't Babbling Babs have a big-ass farewell tour a few years back? She's evidently as liberal with her definition of the word "retirement" as she is with her politics.
  

• The late indie singer-songwriter Elliot Smith is having quite the Biggie/Tupac-style posthumous career -- 'New Moon,' the second collection of his songs released after his death under mysterious circumstances, has opened at No. 24, selling in the 25,000 range. While this author sees the collection as 24 Beatles-evoking windows into a troubled poet's soul, someone more enterprising out there than I is probably sizing the album up as two dozen future car commercial themes.

• It may be time to retire the Weekly Winehouse Watch once and for all, as this writer is running out of ways to say that Amy Winehouse has sold 35,000 more copies of her record for yet another week and that she really, really likes her drinky-winky.
  

The top five albums for the week ending May 13:

1. 'Call Me Irresponsible,' Michael Buble (145,000 in 2nd week; 358,000 total)
2. Strength & Loyalty,' Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (120,000 in 1st week)
3. 'Special Occasion,' Bobby Valentino (92,000 in 1st week)
4. 'Because of You,' Ne-Yo (89,000 in 2nd week; 341,000 total)
5. 'Best Damn Thing,' Avril Lavigne (86,000 in 3rd week; 566,000 total)