Beatles Ride High, Teen Pop Ebbs

January 10 -- Beatles for Sale: The Beatles held the top of the charts through the holiday madness … and with January record stores a ghost town, they're still tops. Though overall sales were down nearly 40 percent from last week, another 268,551 people picked up copies of 1, the Fab Four's hits collection, according to SoundScan data.

Teen Pop Drop: Is the teen pop craze beginning to subside? In addition to pulling in surprisingly few Grammy nominations last week, and failing to dominate Monday's American Music Awards, the bubble-gum pop acts are seeing a rare swoon on the charts.

With the exception of the compilation Now That's What I Call Music, Vol. 5 — which sold 163,947 copies for the No. 3 slot — teen pop has been bounced from the Top 10. The Backstreet Boys "lead" the way, with sales of Black & Blue dropping by 58 percent (after a 76 percent drop last week); the LP moved 71,751 units to secure No. 15.

'N Sync's No Strings Attached sold 54,771 (a drop of 43 percent from last week) to land at No. 22, while Britney Spears' Oops! … I Did It Again sold 54,620 (a drop of 50 percent) to end up at No. 23.

Top 10 Shuffle: Slow business at the record stores means little movement at the top of the album charts. Shaggy's Hot Shot continued its inexorable climb, selling 185,636 units to steal No. 2 from the Now compilation. Snoop Dogg's Tha Last Meal also took a baby step forward, selling 123,206 copies to take the No. 4 slot from Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, which fell to No. 5 on sales of 122,149.

Rounding out the top albums were Creed's Human Clay, which sold 115,568 copies for No. 6; Outkast's Stankonia, which claimed No. 7 on sales of 110,520; Sade's Lovers Rock climbed back to No. 8, selling 100,346 units; Dido's No Angel leapt into the No. 9 slot, though it only sold 88,603 copies; and Lenny Kravitz's Greatest Hits earned No. 10, with 88,410 copies sold.

Soundtrack Sensation: The only albums to actually sell more albums this week than last were soundtrack albums — which are just about the only popular albums released this time of year.