Shania Twain’s ‘Now’ grabs top spot on Billboard’s U.S. album chart and overseas
TORONTO Shania Twain is reclaiming a position atop the charts with her first studio album in 15 years.
The five-time Grammy Award winner’s latest release “Now” rose to the peak position of the Billboard U.S. album charts in its debut week. It sold 137,000 equivalent units, which includes a calculation of its digital streams.
A large majority of those sales — about 134,000 copies — came from traditional physical and digital album purchases, rather than streaming on services like Apple Music and Spotify.
It marked the third-largest sales week for a country album this year and the largest for a woman in nearly two years, according to Billboard.
The Timmins, Ont., native’s return eclipsed a number of other strong performers on the U.S. charts.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers rose to No. 2 with a greatest hits compilation that was buoyed by the singer's death last week. Other new albums from Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus also reached the top 10.
“Now” was solely written and co-produced by Twain and marks her first album release since 2002’s “Up!”
In the years between her projects she battled Lyme disease which she said led to dysphonia, a vocal cord disorder that forced her to stop singing. She dedicated her time to writing a 2011 autobiography and divorced her husband and longtime producing partner Robert (Mutt) Lange.
Twain’s album also grabbed the top spot on the U.K. charts by edging out British band Wolf Alice by a mere 764 copies, according to the Official Charts Company.