Kelly Clarkson new album sales are OK but not great

There may be no second acts in American lives, but there's always another act for an American idol.

“American Idol’s” first champ, Kelly Clarkson, returned to the top of the U.S. pop charts with her new album "All I Ever Wanted" bowing at No. 1, an encouraging start after disappointing sales of her last 2007 effort, “My December.” The new album sold 255,000 copies in its first week in stores in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan data released to Billboard.

While the new album falls short of the first-week figures of “December,” which bowed with 291,000 copies, “All I Ever Wanted” is in line with Clarkson's first-week sales history, suggesting fans weren’t permanently put off by the rough publicity surrounding her previous work and canceled 2007 tour dates.

"All I Ever Wanted” has been positively received by critics, many who noted it represents a return to lighter pop-rock after the harder, more serious “December,” an album Clarkson released after a public dispute with her record label, RCA, over its direction.

"As long as someone like Kelly comes back with great material … the story’s a good story,” said Tom Corson, general manager of Sony BMG's RCA Music Group, the label that's releasing the album. "She’s proud of this record and focused on it, and that’s the news -- not what happened a few years ago.”

The release of “All I Ever Wanted” began with a highly targeted online media campaign three months ago. Beginning in December, RCA started posting artwork, song lyrics and audio clips relating to the new album on Clarkson's official website, treating each snippet as a mini event.

Then a bigger, more TV-focused leg of the marketing campaign kicked in last week. Clarkson returned to perform on “American Idol” and was the music guest on “Saturday Night Live.” This upcoming Friday, she’ll take the couch on “The Oprah Show,” a promotion that should help to prevent a major dip in second-week sales.

“All I Ever Wanted” carried a first-week price of $9.99 at mass retailers such as Best Buy, but will increase to $13.99 for its second week. Unlike many major releases these days, the album was not heavily discounted for online sales. Universal Music Group's Interscope Records, for example, sold “No Line” for $3.99 as a digital download during its first week of release earlier this month at Amazon.com.

“We don’t play that game,” said Corson, declining to elaborate.

Clarkson's fans, at least, were certainly eager for the album's lead single, “My Life Would Suck Without You,” which sold sold more than 1.15 million digital downloads and hit No. 1 when it was released in January. The song, slightly reminiscent of her 2004 breakout smash, "Since U Been Gone,” helped tee up album sales for "All I Ever Wanted."

So far, it looks as if RCA Music Group's marketing strategy is working, and sales of "All I Ever Wanted" will not be marred by the underperforming 2007 album.

“She certainly hit our first-week sales expectations,” said Chris Smith, a senior music buyer at Best Buy. “Her second week doesn’t look to be going the direction most records go from a trending perspective. She’s still maintaining a sales base that is higher than our expectations.”

-- Todd Martens

Photo: Ida Mae Astute / ABC via Getty Images

Last night's 'Lost': Sun rise

The following post discusses last night's episode of "Lost," "Namaste."

I don't have too much to say about last night's episode of "Lost," for a couple of reasons.

First, it was one of those "moving all the parts into place" episodes, and as such, it was perfectly fine. There weren't really any OMG moments, unless you count the reveals of Christian and Young Ben, but because I can't resist reading the cast lists that ABC puts out in advance (I know, bad me), I knew those characters were going to be on the show. Even so, the appearance of Christian was suitably ominous.

Second, I spent much of the day in transit, after a very fun but very exhausting quick jaunt to New York. Nothing caps off a couple busy days of work and travel like sitting on the tarmac at JFK for a long time. I'm pretty tired, so I'll just list the things I liked. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts, as always.

I am really liking Sawyer this season. Josh Holloway is bringing his A-game, and it was great to see him square off with Jack, in a way that shut down Jack's tendency to be kind of annoying. Way to go, Sawyer! I like him as the toughest hombre in Dharma-ville, and I like him as the alpha male keeping Jack in line. The romance stuff, which can be heavy-handed and migraine-inducing on this show, was subtly handled. Through looks alone, Sawyer, Kate, Juliet and Jack acknowledge the rich brew of unacknowledged feelings and resurfacing longings. As I've said in the past, I think Sawyer's tender love for Kate is far more interesting than Kate and Sawyer together, which doesn't really do much for me (Jack and Kate together does even less for me). But as others have been saying, Juliet and Sawyer have really wonderful chemistry together -- two lost, guarded souls who found refuge in each other. I'd much, much rather see them stay together than for the show's writers to peel them apart in order to keep various permutations of the love quandrangle going. I can see spicing up Sawyer-Juliet with complications. But if there's a long round of aggravating breakups and makeups just to "add romance" to the show, I'm going to get cranky (then again, this season the show has really turned on the afterburners. I have the sense that they're not going to waste time with an overabundance of pointless romance melodrama). I'm liking Patrick Fischler as Phil. He sure seems friendly, but as we saw when he confronted Kate, he can turn paranoid and intimidating on a dime.  I loved the moment when Sun whacked Ben with the paddle. He's had that coming for a while. Young Ben seems suitably creepy. So are we to understand that Ben has known all these characters for far longer than he's ever let on? I guess so. Talking of creepy, so the sweet Amy had a baby named... Ethan, a.k.a. Mr FreakyPants. It's weird thinking that such a sweet innocent babe will end up being such a malevolent or at the very least strange guy, but that appears to be the case. You know I'm a sucker for Dharma Initiative stuff, so to see Pierre Chang processing an intake group was fun (and I'm such a Dharma-phile that I recognized the brief footage in the training video of a man riding a bike as being from a past Dharma clip I saw at Comic-Con, I forget when). I also like that we saw more of Frank Lapidus. This episode had so many elements that I generally like -- Lapidus, the D.I., Chang, Sawyer in full wisecrack mode, Hurley in a D.I. jumpsuit for goodness sake -- that even though it wasn't a major episode in any way, it still passed by quickly and enjoyably.  Did you see what the other screens in Radzinsky's station wereplaying? I couldn't quite make out all the screens, but one of them hadan image of Kermit the Frog.The group photo here is from an array of promo photos ABC released today. I'm no photo expert, but this group picture seems to be, well, weird. It looks very obviously to me like a bunch of separate shots that were Photoshopped together and the lighting seems off. Ah well, never mind. I prefer the shot of Sun about to whack Ben in the head. You can't really improve on that.

Share your thoughts on "Namaste" below, if you care to.

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