Justin Timberlake’s ‘The 20/20 Experience’ Best-Selling Album Of 2013
Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience finished 2013 as the best-selling album of the year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Timberlake released the first part of The 20/20 Experience on March 19, which debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with 968,000 copies sold in its first week. It was Timberlake’s second number one album as a solo artist, with the first being 2006’s FutureSex/LoveSounds, which sold 684,000 copies in its first week.
In its second week, The 20/20 Experience sold 318,000 copies to remain at the top of the charts, and became the first album of the year to sell one million units. The album was certified double platinum in April.
The 20/20 Experience sold 2.43 million copies in 2013, and was the only album to sell more than 2 million copies last year. It was also the smallest-selling year-end number one album since SoundScan began tracking music sales in 1991. The previous low was Lil Wayne’s 2008 album Tha Carter III, which sold 2.87 million. Both albums are the only year-end SoundScan number one albums to finish a year with less than 3 million copies sold.
The second best-selling album of the year was Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2, which sold 1.73 million copies to mark the sixth time the Detroit rapper placed an album in the year’s top 10.
Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” was the year’s best-selling song with 6.5 million sold. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop,” featuring Wanz, was the second best-selling song with 6.15 million sold. “Blurred Lines” was also named the UK’s best-selling single with 1.44 million copies sold since its release. The track also topped Playlist’s Song of the Year list. “Blurred Lines” peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, as well as the R&B Songs chart. It was Thicke’s first song to reach number one on the Hot 100 chart, and ranked at number two on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart.
Nielsen’s 2013 sales tracking began on December 31, 2012 and ended on December 29, 2013.
[Photo credit: Abigail Toribio / Flickr]
