Zac Brown Band Regains Top Spot on the Chart

By BEN SISARIO

In a slow week for music sales Zac Brown Band returned to No. 1 on Billboard's album chart, and Carly Rae Jepsen's “Call Me Maybe” has been certified as one of the biggest hits of the year.

The country-rock Zac Brown Band's “Uncaged” (Southern Ground/Atlantic), which opened at No. 1 two weeks ago and then fell to No. 2, made its way back to the top slot with 48,000 sales in its third week out, according to Nielsen SoundScan. As Billboard notes, that's the lowest sales number for a No. 1 album in almost 18 months, when Nicki Minaj's “Pink Friday” had 45,000 in the winter doldrums of February 2011.

“Uncaged” traded spaces this week with Nas's “Life Is Good” (Def Jam), which opened at No. 1 last week and falls one spot with 45,000 sales. The Gaslight Anthem - a Jersey rock band all the way - opens at No. 3 with 40,000 sales of “Handwritten” (Mercury), its first for a major label. At No. 4 is another band that has gone from the indies to the big leagues: Passion Pit, from Cambridge, Mass., whose “Gossamer” (Columbia) sold 37,000 copies.

Ms. Jepsen, the Canadian pop singer who came under the wing of Justin Bieber and his team, is No. 1 for the eighth week on the Billboard Hot 100, the magazine's standard singles chart. Her “Call Me Maybe” has tied Gotye's equally ubiquitous song “Somebody That I Used to Know” for the longest run at the top of that chart this year, thanks not only to sales and airplay but also to online popularity that has continued unabated for months.

And Adele, that other female pop juggernaut? She's still in the Top 10, after 75 weeks. This week her album “21” (XL/Columbia) holds at No. 9 with 30,000 sales; in total she has sold just over 9.6 million copies in the United States.