EMINEM’S FOUR PLAY

If only summer sales could sport a Recovery like Eminem.

The rap superstar’s current Shady/Aftermath/Interscope album will spend its fourth straight week at the #1 spot next week, with no debut on target for six figures.

It’s the first album to spend that long at the top of the charts since the end of last year and beginning of this, when Susan Boyle turned the trick, with six consecutive weeks at #1. Before that, Taylor Swift’s Fearless spent seven weeks on top in 2008-’09. Justin Bieber’s My World 2.0 has been #1 four weeks this year, but not consecutively.

Korn III Remember Who You Are, the band’s first album for new label Roadrunner, and first since 2007’s Untitled on Virgin/EMI will be the week’s top debut, with a total between 60-65k.

Decca’s new Sting album, Symphonicity, featuring orchestral versions of some of his biggest hits, is in line for a debut between 40-45k.

Sire’s The Maine, an alternative rock band from Phoenix, will score a fairly impressive 30-35k for their major label debut (and second overall), Black and White.

Epic’s Hellyeah, a metal supergroup featuring Mudvayne vocalist Chad Gray and guitarist Greg Tribbett along with former Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul, will score 25-30k for their second album, Stampede.

N.E.E.T./Interscope’s M.I.A. album is looking at between 25-30k for her new album, whose title we’ll reproduce as Maya, her real name.

Inpop’s Newsboys, a Grammy-award winning Christian pop-rock band from Australia that’s been around in one form or other since the mid-‘80s, will debut with 25-30k for the album, Born Again.

Arista Nashville’s Jerrod Neimann should do between 24-27k, while Sky Harbor Records/Universal Republic’s Sky Sailing, Owl City principal Adam Young’s first band, will bow with 12-15k for An Airplane Carried Me to Bed.

The market was down 5% vs. last week, down 28% vs. same week last year (in the midst of Michael Jackson mania, naturally) and now down 12% year to date.

It's enough to make you think Mel Gibson has it easy.