Britney Spears Sells 609,000 Copies Of 'In The Zone'
December 1, 2003
To say Britney Spears had a happy Thanksgiving would be an understatement. The singer celebrated the holiday as her fourth album In The Zone became the top selling album in the U.S. after 609,000 copies of the set were purchased in one week, according to industry figures released on Wednesday (November 26). Spears scored the largest first week sales of any female artist this year.
The 21-year-old pop star's last album, Britney, also debuted at Number One with 746,000 copies sold during its first week in November 2001. In addition, Spears earned the highest one-week sales of any female artist in the history of Soundscan when she sold 1.3 million copies of Oops! ... I Did It Again in its first week of release in May of 2000.
When In The Zone debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 album chart Spears became the first female in Soundscan history to have four Number One albums in a row. Making the feat even more impressive is the fact that Spears co-wrote eight of the 13 songs on the album.
Spears explained to LAUNCH that the songs that she wrote serve as a representation of her life: "I think every song--I mean you have to go through experiences in your life and go through day to day things to be able to write songs and to have something to express yourself and be able to write about, so I think every song is a representation of me."
On the other hand, she admitted that while the songs represent her--not all of her songs are factual: "It's not completely too personal. Sometimes I write about fictitious things. You know, like I'll make up a story in my head about someone going through an issue in life and then, you know, I'll be in the studio and we'll have chemistry with people and we'll go from there."
In The Zone also debuted at Number One in France, Korea, Mexico and Argentina, and it had top 10 debuts in Germany, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Japan, Austria, Holland, Switzerland and Ireland.
Some of the other producers/writers on the album include Moby on "Early Mornin'," Bloodshy & Avant on "Showdown," Guy Sigsworth on "Everytime," and R. Kelly on "Outrageous."
Spears will kick off her In the Zone World Tour in March 2004.