ONE-DAY SALES:
CLAY AIKEN’S TAKIN’ OVER

Idolize this: The runner-up from the last American Idol series won’t be a runner up on next week’s album chart.

Indeed, Clay Aiken’s RCA debut, Measure of a Man is just plain huge—a whopper, a honker, a giant, beefy burrito of love. Uh, we didn’t actually measure it ourselves... that’s just what we hear. Be that as it may, after one day on sale Measure is on track to sell 650k in its first week, according to early reports from national accounts.

That number could rise as high as 700k before it’s all said and done, because the upper demo to which Aiken appeals makes it hard to tell how the album will trend. They’re inscrutable, those upper-demo consumers. Hard to tell what’s behind those beady little eyes.

In any event, with 1.5 million units already in the streets, stock should not be an issue with this one.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that Columbia’s Jagged Edge should see their latest, Hard (huh huh huh, we said “hard”), move as many as 175k units for the week, easily putting them in Top 5 contention.

And speaking of upper demo, Barbra Streisand’s new Columbia collection, The Movie Album, is already seeing an unexpectedly huge lift from all those older folks going out and buying that whippersnapper Clay Aiken’s album. Combine that with Babs’ appearance on Oprah yesterday, and studious observers won’t be surprised if she moves 150k for the week.