Taylor Swift rules the Billboard 200 again
Meek Mills, Rod Stewart and Neil Young make strong debuts
Taylor Swift
Credit: AP Photo
The Billboard 200 is seeing "Red" again.
For the second week in a row, Taylor Swift's new "Red" album tops the Billboard 200 chart, after selling 344,000 copies, down 72% from last week. It sold over 1 million in its debut last week.
Rapper Meek Mill's debut studio album "Dreams & Nightmares" enters the chart at No. 2, moving 165,000 copies.
Rod Stewart's new holiday album "Merry Christmas, Baby" premieres at No. 3 with 88,000 copies sold. It's the legendary singer's 16th top 10 album.
Jason Aldean's "Night Train" moves from No. 3 to No. 4 with 71,000, while Kendrick Lamar's "Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City" rounds out the top 5. In its second week of release, "City" sold 63,000 copies (down 74%).
Toby Keith's new "Hope on the Rocks" debuts at No. 6, selling 48,000. It's the country star's 13th top ten record.
Mumford & Sons' "Babel" dropped from No. 4 to No. 7. After selling another 44,000 this week (down 18%), the album has passed 1 million in sales.
Neil Young & Crazy Horse's "Psychedelic Pill" -- their second album of 2012 after the top ten set "Americana" -- debuts at No. 8 with 34,000 sold.
Perennial holiday favorites Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Dreams of Fireflies (On a Christmas Night)" EP bows at No. 9, with 32,000 sold.
Moving up one spot and closing out the top ten, country act Little Big Town's "Tornado" sold 29,000 copies.
The overall album sales total for this week came to 5.44 million units, which is a 13% drop from last week. Overall sales are down 12% compared with the the same week last year, when 6.17 million albums were sold. Likewise, the year-to-date album sales figure (245.85 million) is down 4% when measured against this point last year (255.46 million). 
Dave Lewis has been a Los Angeles-based entertainment writer and editor for nearly ten years. Originally hailing from Minneapolis, he moved to L.A. in 1996 to attend USC, before working for various periodicals and web sites including a lengthy stint at Variety.com. He joined the HitFix staff in 2011.
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