Pigs continue to fly

By Ken Barnes, USA TODAY
Can we ever escape high school? Not on the Billboard charts this week. In its first week, the soundtrack to High School Musical 2 outsold the rest of the top 10, moving 615,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's the second-best debut-week total for the year (just short of Linkin Park's 623,000) and the fourth-best tally for a soundtrack.

Ten HSM2 tracks enter the digital songs chart, selling 326,000 copies, topped by the 60,000-selling Zac Efron/Vanessa Hudgens duet You Are the Music in Me at No. 9. Add 25,000 copies of retail single What Time Is It and 20,000 copies of five charting ringtones from the soundtrack, and total HSM2 purchases add up to 986,000. And predecessor High School Musical jumped from No. 28 to No. 16 on the chart, selling 30,000 copies to bring the grand total to more than 1 million.

Hannah Montana 2 (benefiting from a new episode airing after HSM2) is No. 2 on the album chart, followed by the debut of Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds' Live at Radio City Music Hall, Now 25, Hairspray, UGK, Fergie, Jonas Brothers, Plies and Common.