Susan Boyle’s “I Dreamed a Dream” reigns for a sixth straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 137,000 (down 73%) according to Nielsen SoundScan, bringing her cumulative sales total up to 3,104,000. However, while that is a huge sales sum — especially considering it was totaled in just six weeks time — it’s not enough to overtake Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” as 2009′s top selling album. The latter is at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 this week, selling another 60,000 — bringing its 2009 total to 3,217,000.
Of course, Boyle can rest easy in knowing that her “Dream” is but one of just two albums to sell at least 3 million copies in the U.S. last year — something that hasn’t happened since 2006, when three albums did it. Boyle’s “Dream” is also 2009′s top selling album released last year (Swift’s “Fearless” dropped in late 2008), and was also the top selling physical album of 2009. Of its overall 2009 total, physical CDs accounted for 3,019,000 copies, whereas digital downloads made up a rather tiny 86,000.
Michael Jackson’s “Number Ones” is 2009′s third biggest-selling album, with 2.36 million according to SoundScan, while Lady Gaga’s “The Fame” is fourth with 2.24 million. Andrea Bocelli’s recent release “My Christmas” powered through 2.21 million in just nine weeks, making it the year’s fifth best. The soundtrack to “Hannah Montana: the Movie” is sixth (1.82 million), followed by the Black Eyed Peas’ “The E.N.D.” (No. 7 with 1.79 million), Eminem’s “Relapse” (No. 8 with 1.74 million), Jay-Z’s “The Blueprint 3″ (No. 9 with 1.52 million) and Kings of Leon’s “Only By the Night” (No. 10 with 1.40 million).



