Lady Gaga Rules Albums Chart with 1.1 Million in First Week

The official numbers are in. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way reigns atop the albums chart with over a million copies sold in its first week, becoming the biggest debut since 2005.

The pop powerhouse’s third album enters at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 1,108,000 units, according to Billboard. It also marks Gaga’s first No. 1 album. Her debut The Fame peaked at No. 2 and its follow-up The Fame Monster reached No. 5.

Born This Way is the 17th album to sell over a million in a week since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991. It outperformed Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III (1,005,000) and Taylor Swift’s Speak Now (1,047,000), boasting the largest sales week of any album since 50 Cent’s The Massacre moved 1,141,000 copies in March 2005.

Gaga is the fifth woman to sell a million copies in one week following Britney Spears’ Oops! I Did It Again (1,319,000), The Bodyguard soundtrack featuring Whitney Houston (1,061,000), Norah Jonas’ Feels Like Home (1,022,000), and Swift.

Born This Way benefited from $0.99 pricing on Amazon.com, which accounted for an estimated 440,000 copies. The promotion was not organized by Gaga’s label, Interscope Records, and cost the online retailer a reported $3.2 million over two days, according to Billboard’s estimate.