Mumford & Sons Holds Top Spot on Album Chart

Three years ago the British group Mumford & Sons played the CMJ Music Marathon as a buzzed-about new band with an intriguing folk-rock sound. Then its debut album, “Sigh No More,” sold 2.5 million copies in the United States. Two weeks ago its latest release, “Babel,” opened at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with 600,000 copies sold, the biggest debut of the year, and held the top spot for a second week.

This week the band's winning streak continues, with “Babel” - released, like “Sigh No More,” by the Glassnote label - holding at No. 1 with 96,000 sales, bringing its three-week total to 865,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

“Babel” beat a wave of high-charting new releases. The hip-hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis opened at No. 2 with 78,000 sales of its self-released album “The Heist”; Kiss reached No. 3 with 56,000 sales of its latest album, “Monster” (Universal); and MGK, a rapper also known as Machine Gun Kelly, reached No . 4 with his debut studio album, “Lace Up” (Est 19XX/Bad Boy/Interscope), selling 51,000.

Others in the Top 10 this week include new albums by Coheed and Cambria (No. 5), All Time Low (No. 6), Barbra Streisand (No. 7) and Ellie Goulding (No. 9). Pink's latest, “The Truth About Love” (RCA), landed at No. 8 in its third week out, and Muse's “2nd Law” (Warner Brothers), which opened at No. 2 last week, fell to No. 10.