LOVE AT FIRST BITE

With critical plaudits and nonstop summer festival appearances, XL Recordings’ Vampire Weekend nail their second chart-topping album, as Modern Vampires of the City debuts at #1 with close to 135k. The band’s previous album, 2009’s Contra, bowed with 124k in January 2010, and went on to move more than 500k.

MCA Nashville Ccountry veteran George Strait’s Love Is Everything debuts at #2 with 132k, which beats the #3 debut of his last studio effort, 2011’s Here for a Good Time. He recently scored the 60th country chart-topper in his career, when “Give It All We Got Tonight” went to #1.

Hollywood’s Demi Lovato earns her best first-week sales figure ever, as Demi debuts at #3 with 112k, outselling her #1 album Here We Go Again, the chanteuse's previous best, which entered at #1 in July 2009 with 108k.

Interscope’s The Great Gatsby soundtrack (#4) and Capitol Nashville’s Lady Antebellum (#5) remained in the Top 5 in their second weeks.

Sparrow Christian artist Amy Grant’s How Mercy Looks From Here (#10) is the only other newcomer to the Top 10, with Capitol’s Now 46 (#6), RCA’s Justin Timberlake (#7), Reprise’s Michael Buble (#8) and RCA Nashville’s Pistol Annies (#9) rounding out the sales leaders.

New entries on the Top 50 include Show Dog’s Trace Adkins (#15), Eleven Seven’s Escape the Fate (#20), Hopeless’ The Wonder Years (#26), eOne’s Pop Evil (#33), Sumerian’s Dillinger Escape Plan (#37), indie rapper Mike Stud (#40) and From the Rib’s Eve (#41). New Elektra’s Ed Sheeran re-enters at #48.

Biggest mover of the week goes to Aftermath/Interscope’s Kendrick Lamar, who climbs #46-39.

Hitting this week, Columbia’s Daft Punk heads the field, with other releases of note including Virgin’s Thirty Seconds to Mars, Capitol Nashville’s Darius Rucker, 4AD’s The National and Bad Boy/Intersope’s French Montana.