FOUR-WAY STREET

The band’s new Island album will be next week’s top debut, with a total hovering in the 140-150k range, based on one-day sales reports from those retailers able to tear themselves away from watching Wanda Sykes’ new talk show.

That will set up a four-way race for the top spot next Tuesday among the Jersey boys, this week’s #1 finisher, CMA host Carrie Underwood, dark horse Andrea Bocelli and Michael Jackson.

Our own in-house tout, who picked John McCain in last year’s election, is high on Bocelli, which is not some rare cush from the medical marijuana dispensary, but the Italian tenor whose Decca album My Christmas, which bowed at #3 yesterday, could be “this year’s Josh Groban,” who dominated the 2008 Q4 holiday rush.

A&M/Octone’s Flyleaf is up next with 50-55k in estimated sales, followed by Atlantic’s Switchfoot (45-50k, possibly higher pending Christian bookstore sales), DGC’s Dashboard Confessional (35-40k), Jive/JLG;s Britney Spears Singles Collection and Allido/Interscope D.C. rapper Wale up next (both at 25-28k).

Another James Diener artist development story, A&M/Octone’s Hollywood Undead, are out with a deluxe edition of their best-selling album (22-25k), while Atlantic’s Jason Mraz has a live CD/DVD debuting (15-18k).

The market was up 6% vs. last week, down 2% vs. same week last year and still down 13% year to date. You may now resume your Jay Leno death watch.