'Frozen' keeps icy grip on top spot of Billboard album sales chart

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A pair of animated singing princesses kept the top spot on the weekly Billboard 200 chart of best-selling albums on Wednesday, ahead of Grammy-winning artists, as a new sing-along version of Disney's "Frozen" propelled sales of the soundtrack album. "Frozen" sold 94,000 copies last week according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan, marking a fourth non-consecutive week at No. 1 on Billboard 200. The film, a tale of two Scandinavian princess sisters forced to save their kingdom from an everlasting winter, also raked in $9.3 million at the box office last weekend with its new sing-along version. It is the first film soundtrack to spend four weeks at the top of the album chart in a decade, Billboard said. The last album to do the same was the "Bad Boys II" soundtrack in August 2003, spending four consecutive weeks at No. 1. "Frozen" continued to hold off the official "2014 Grammy Nominees" album, which held steady at No. 2 with sales of 87,000 copies. The Grammy awards on January 26 did boost sales of its performers, as albums from Lorde, Beyonce, Imagine Dragons, Katy Perry and Daft Punk all featured in the top 10 this week. Perry's single "Dark Horse," which she performed on the Grammy stage with rapper Juicy J, held the top spot on the Digital Songs chart this week, with 373,000 downloads. Bruno Mars, who won a Grammy and also performed at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday, watched by a record-breaking 115.3 million viewers, saw his album "Unorthodox Jukebox" climb from No. 18 to No. 7 this week. Only two new albums debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 this week. Heavy metal group Of Mice & Men's latest album "Restoring Force" came in at No. 4 while Christian rock band Casting Crowns landed at No. 6 with its latest record "Thrive." For the week ending February 2, overall album sales notched 4.6 million units, down 12 percent from the comparable week in 2013, Billboard said. (Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Mary Milliken and Cynthia Osterman)