At 95, Tony Bennett tops the charts
NEW YORK – At the ripe old age of 95, Tony Bennett is on top of his game.
The legendary pop music crooner — recently recognized by Guinness World Records as the “oldest person to release an album of new material” — has debuted in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Jazz Albums chart with his latest Lady Gaga collaboration, Love for Sale.
The acclaimed 12-track set of Cole Porter standards also landed on the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, which tracks the best-selling albums sold and streamed in the United States.
According to MRC tracking data, Love for Sale, released on September 30, accumulated 41,000 album-equivalent units, consisting of 38,000 sales, and 3,000 streaming units calculated from the 3.85 million on-demand streams the album received in its first week.
The project is the sixth top-10 album of Bennett’s illustrious career, with which he marked the longest span of top 10 albums for any living artist. He scored his first one 59 years ago with 1962’s I Left My Heart in San Francisco.
Love for Sale is Bennett’s second collaborative album with Lady Gaga. In 2014 the genre-defying duo’s Cheek to Cheek debuted atop of the Billboard 200 chart.
Before Bennett (given name: Anthony Dominick Benedetto) retired from performing live, the multiple Grammy winner performed two sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall in early August called “One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga.”
In commemoration of the singer’s 95th birthday, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared August 3 to be “Tony Bennett Day.”
Bennett’s family shared in an interview with AARP this year that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016.
Born in Long Island City, Bennett has won 19 Grammys in his career, while Gaga, who hails from Manhattan, has won 12.
(New York Daily News/TNS)