i cut and pasted the news piece from two years ago...
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Bowing at No. 11 with "You Are the Quarry" (Attack/Sanctuary), Morrissey not only scores the highest position of his solo career but also beats out any chart placement he had with the Smiths. The set sold 56,000 copies in its first week, far exceeding 1997's "Maladjusted" (Mercury), which opened with just 19,000 and a No. 61 perch; the set has sold 87,000 to date.
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An anonymous person writes:

YATQ debuts at #11 on the Soundscan chart with 56,399 copies sold first week! To put that into perspective, here are first week sales for his albums since the start of Soundscan in 1992.

Your Arsenal - 39,472 - #21
Vauxhall & I - 56,210 - #18
Southpaw Grammar - 14,279 - #66
Maladjusted - 19,020 - #61
You Are the Quarry - 56,399 - #11

Here are the top 15 albums in the US this week along with the number of copies sold last week.

1 USHER, CONFESSIONS 213966
2 METHOD MAN, TICAL 0:THE PREQUEL 164225
3 NEW FOUND GLORY CATALYST, 146816
4 WILSON*GRETCHEN, HERE FOR THE PARTY 138670
5 MORISSETTE*ALANIS, SO-CALLED CHAOS 114525
6 D-12, D12 WORLD 86730
7 HOOBASTANK, THE REASON 78344
8 8-BALL & MJG, LIVING LEGENDS 64641
9 VA-NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSI, VOL. 15-NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL 58262
10 MONTGOMERY GENTRY, YOU DO YOUR THING 57922
11 MORRISSEY, YOU ARE THE QUARRY 56399
12 SHREK 2, SOUNDTRACK 53700
13 WINANS*MARIO, HURT NO MORE 53344
14 KRAVITZ*LENNY, BAPTISM 52194
15 OUTKAST, SPEAKERBOXX-LOVE 50186

since ROTT, i would think, would please the US indie music listenning public more than YATQ. i would say the lack of sales would be due to Sanctuary not promoting the album here in the states (bankrupt). Morrissey should have also done a mini tour like he did last time. granted it was only in Las Vegas, New York, and LA....it did get a lot of press and people excitied.

i would also say YATQ being the first album in 7 years played a part in its success...and furthermore, many people who knew morrissey's music were turned off by YATQ. a friend of mine hasn't even heard ROTT. after listeinning to YATQ he figures he won't like any morrissey music anymore. a shame becaues ROTT is a better album.

maybe the amazon stream (leak) played a part in it too. why did they release it? i don't know. but it wouldn't account for 50% less sales.

It would be interesting to see how many copies the album will sell overall...i think with the lack of publicity in the States, many didn't know about it. But now that it is released, people may find out about it. Walking by Tower Records and Virgin, i didn't even see posters in the windows like i did in 2004. Such a shame, ROTT is a better album and the US indie crowd would like it. althugh You Have Killed Me is a weak single. I skip it on the album. The Youngest Was The Most Loved and In the Future When All Is Well would have been better choices and may help future sales substantially.

...and sad.

If the Flaming Lips, with perhaps and equal amount of promotion in print, can sell nearly 60K, why not morrissey?

Morrissey has been on a downward spiral, cemmercially, since Vauxhall and I and in the US market that is a very hard process to put a stop to. Look at REM. Still selling a huge amount of albums in Europe, but they are nowhere in the US market. Once the industry gives up on you, you're done.
Moz was finished commercially in the US in 1994.

Not a surprise it enters at only #27 - North American charts are a perfect example of how lame the music industry is over here - populated by talentless hip hop, rap and faceless top 40 pre-fab shite.

Im more concerned how it does on the UK charts, at least they have some clue of what makes decent music.

Just another government conspiracy no doubt.

Damn FBI, he obviously didn't offer them a fig roll when they interrogated them, this is his payback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtGCOjSkf_0&search= morrissey

Lack of strong marketing and buzz by record label = failure.

YATQ was a commercial success here largely due to the giant marketing blitz (Radio, t.v., magazines) by Sanctuary, whereas this time they got lazy and just hoped to cruise by with the success of YATQ, and it just doesn't work that way.

Thanks to all those who download everything. This is what you get when no one pays for the cd. #27 is shite!

thetexasbloke

quarry entered the u.s charts at 11
but the next week slipped to 47th

US population 298,504,549
World population 6,509,390,172

YATQ sold 192,000 copies in the US

192,000 divided by 298,504,549 = .06432% of the US population

I would hardly call .06432% of the population "the masses"!

Pretty sad when you look at the numbers.

The Virgin Megastore at Union Square has a huge Ringleader poster up facing Broadway. Tower Records also has a poster up and a Vespa right inside the entrance as part of the Ringleader campaign. There are posters for Ringleader all over the East Village. They replaced the posters for "You Have Killed Me" which were all over last week. There may be little promotion nationwide, but here in my neighborhood Morrissey's face is everywhere.

I don't know what commercial radio is doing, but Sirius has been playing "Pigsty," "In the Future" and "You Have Killed Me" alternately, every day. While I am overjoyed to have him back on the cultural radar, it is no suprise that Mozzer is not charting very well. The American zeitgeist just now does not seem congenial to "the greatest living Englishman" (didn't someone call him that recently?) or what he represents. Like so many others here, this makes me very sad indeed.

i saw a beautiful rott promo poster at a record store in pittsburgh. it shows moz holding the leash of a really mean looking dog with an ominous sky overhead. has anyone else seen this?

So, Morrissey bowed out at #27? Not great, but it's not the end of the world. As far as why it happened, I can tell you why it DIDN'T:

1) YATQ did NOT suck. Song for song, it's a much stronger album than Maladjusted. I know all the 'hardcore' fans want to go back to the days of "Such a Little Thing" or what-not, but Morrissey has changed since 1989. He'll keep changing, too. All of the singles on YATQ were great, and most of the album tracks (aside from AINTW, ATLD, ILY) were solid. What more do you want from the man?

2) Using the logic that the last album being bad equals poor sales for the next one, "Vauxhall and I" must have sucked so bad. How else can you explain Southpaw Grammar's performance on the charts? Aside from the fact that album's a mess and "Dagenham Dave" might be his worst single ever....
You see, Vauxhall was a wonderful album. So explain to me how Southpaw didn't sell.

3) I think the real reason lies in the fact that Morrissey's 'comeback' isn't news anymore. After 7 years of nothing, it's no surprise that YATQ did so well, regardless of older fan's opinions of its quality. He became a fad for a second, with all of those bands naming him and the Smiths as an influence. Hell, FOTGTD appeared on an MTV-Laguna Beach comp -- do you really think MTV brats are going to stay on as Mozz fans? But two years on, the fad is over. I don't see any less or more marketing for ROTT than YATQ, although he hasn't made any TV appearances in America yet.

Look, Mozz is never going to be a huge star here. He's not conservative enough and too homoerotic to ever meet the mainstream fan's need for a alpha male ape rocker like Kid Rock. I'd like to see some demographics -- I wonder if he sold great in California, big Eastern cities, and in heavily Mexican-Hispanic areas and flopped everywhere else.

So stop blaming YATQ for Mozz's troubles here, and realize that he's just not many Americans' type of star. He'll retain his major cult status and sell out tours -- as long as he plays longer shows than he is now. I always liked him better as an outsider anyway.

even though he didn't appear on Kilborn, the fact that he was hyped for weeks before his non-appearance got curiosity seekers and those who don't read the internet all the time to say "hey, a new Morrissey CD is coming out!" and got them up off the couch to go buy a CD. Kilborn is not a big market by any stretch of the imagination, but it was repetetive enough to get the message out to the people who tune in on rare occasions.

also, early dates in NY and LA hit up his biggest markets in the US. maybe not everyone was going to go see him in concert, but at least a few people saw his ad in the paper.

this time around, unless you are looking for it, you don't know there is a CD. most people buy their CDs at Best Buy and Wal-Mart these days. stores like Tower and Virgin may have a poster or two up on the wall, but it's a small group that goes in to shop at times other than Birthdays and Christmas.