Queens Of The Stone Age: 'Like Clockwork' Album Reigns Supreme As Billboard #1 [VIDEO]
With their new album ...Like Clockwork, rock band Queens Of The Stone Age clock in with their first-ever No.1 album.
According to a report by Billboard,pulished on Wednesday, the album sold 91,000 copies during its first week. It edged ahead of the winner of the last two weeks, French electronic act Daft Punk and their new album Random Access Memories; its haul for the week was only 62,000 albums.
The No. 1 is a new benchmark for the band's record label, Matador Records. In its history the label has only posted two top ten debuts: Interpol's 2010 self-titled album came in at No. 7, and the 2012 Cat Power album, Sun, debuted at No. 10.
The album also debuts in vinyl form and landed on the top of Billboard's Vinyl Albums chart, selling 12,000 LPs for about 13% of total sales.
The album is the band's sixth, and the first since 2007's Era Vulgaris. The new album outsold its predecessor, which debuted at No. 14 with 52,000 copies. The band's previous highest debut was the No. 5 nod by fourth album Lullabies To Paralyze, which sold 6,000 more albums than Clockwork.
The album comes out of a tumultuous time for the band, including health issues and a case of musician's block for singer, guitarist, and founding member Josh Homme. He once told the British music magazine NME in 2011 that he "died" on an operating table during knee surgery and had to eventually be revived.
"I couldn't be more excited ... ecstatic is the word," Homme told a crowd at an L.A. show last month, and it seemed to sum up his feeling about finally completing the process.
"There is something different about this record for us because it started in such a f---ing fog," he told the Australian newspaper The Age in a May 31 article.
"There's a starting point on this record that's very real and, for a band that's always searching for 'real' and 'honest', well, you better be careful what you wish for because this record came from the desperation of 'there's a strong chance we're not going to make it through this...'."
However, the Queens have made it through, with a little help from collaborators old and new. ...Like Clockwork features appearances from original Queens bassist Nick Oliveri and Dave Grohl, who had also drummed on the band's breakthrough 2002 album, Songs For The Deaf, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, Arctic Monkeys singer Alex Turner, Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears, and even Elton John, who suggested the band needed "an actual queen" for their new album.
Watch the band perform the first ...Like Clockwork single, My God Is The Sun, on the Late Show with David Letterman on June 5.