The twerk didn’t work.
Miley Cyrus nabbed the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s charts Wednesday — but despite the non-stop marketing by the 20-year-old it was only the eighth-best debut week this year.
And for Cyrus, signed to Sony Music’s RCA label, the 270,000 copies of “Bangerz” that have sold since its Oct. 4 release amount to only her fourth-best performance, according to Nielsen’s SoundScan.
Even “Hannah Montana” sold 281,000 units in 2006. That was followed by “Meet Miley Cyrus” at 326,000 (2007) and “Breakout” at 371,000 (2008).
Justin Timberlake’s “20/20 Experience 1 of 2” blows Cyrus out of the water: He sold 968,000 copies in the opening week, while his “20/20 Experience 2 of 2” hit 350,000.
Luke Bryan, Jay Z, Drake, Daft Punk and Kanye West all had better numbers than Cyrus, who has been shamelessly hawking the album everywhere from Rolling Stone to “Ellen,” the daytime talk show.
Cyrus, who shocked the nation when she twerked Robin Thicke at the MTV Music Video Awards while dressed in a nude plastic bikini, has since stripped naked in the video of her single, “Wrecking Ball,” and is starring in Future’s video “Real and True,” covered in only metallic paint.
To her credit, though, “Bangerz” is her fifth No. 1 album.
The pop tart explained her marketing strategy to a recent interviewer: “It’s like a salesperson really, you know you’re like, ‘This s***t does not get rid of your wrinkles, but if I sell it well enough you know, they’re gonna buy into it.’ ”