Justin Holds Off Clay, Fergie

Clay Aiken just got another dose of the runner-up blues.

In a week that saw five albums top 100,000 in sales and five debut in the Top 10, the American Idol also-ran failed to rally enough members of the Clay Nation to dethrone

Justin Timberlake.

The ex-'N Syncer sold 217,000 copies of FutureSex/LoveSounds for the week ended Sunday, per Nielsen SoundScan numbers released today, bringing its two-week tally to 903,000. Sales of the disc, which boasts Timberlake's first Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, "Sexy Back," were down nearly 70 percent from the previous week, when it opened with the biggest first-week sales by a solo artist this year.

Aiken trailed by 12,000 copies as A Thousand Different Ways finished with 205,000--about a third as many copies of his 2003 post-Idol debut, Measure of a Man. That disc moved 613,000 first-week units, still a record among all Idol alumni (all of whom seem to be releasing CDs this fall, including the man who beat Aiken,

Ruben Studdard, whose The Return is due Oct. 17.)

Checking into the three spot was Fergie with her solo debut, The Dutchess. The album, produced by Black Eyed Peas cohort Will.I.Am, sold 142,000 in its first week and features the single "London Bridge," which spent three weeks at number one on the Hot 100.

Country star and short-time

Renee Zellweger hubby

Kenny Chesney roped in the four spot with his concert disc Live: Those Songs Again, which sold 137,000 copies. The singer's The Road and the Radio still remains strong in its 46th week, resting at 78 with 11,000 in sales to surpass the 2.5 million mark.

Diana Krall's From This Moment On sold 85,000 copies at seven, which also marks her seventh straight album to top Billboard's jazz chart. Wrapping up the Top 10 debuts was Midwestern rapper Chingy, whose Hoodstar sold 70,000 copies to drop right thurr at eight.

John Mayer recorded the other 100K-plus sales week as his Continuum moved 133,000 units at number five. Rounding out the Top 10: Beyonce's B'Day at six, Hinder's Extreme Behavior at nine and

Bob Dylan's Modern Times at 10.

Aside from the quintet of newcomers to the Top 10, there were five other new entries in the Top 25 led by Lupe Fiasco,

Jesse McCartney and

Elton John.

Fiasco, a skater-rapper known for his work with Kanye West and for his skate-inspired hit, "Kick, Push," sold 58,000 copies of Food & Liquor at 12. Teen heartthrob McCartney (who recently got on J.Lo's bad side by wrongly claiming that she was pregnant) opened his Right Where You Want Me at 14 with nearly 52,000 copies. Sir Elton, meanwhile, saw The Captain and the Kid, a sequel to his 1975 classic Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, set sail at 18, selling 37,000.

Meanwhile, punk-powered rockers New Found Glory landed at 24 as Coming Home slid home on 31,000 discs, while Latin music superstar Paulina Rubio debuted at 25 selling a career-best 30,000 first-week copies of Ananda.

Other notable debuts included Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's Thug Stories at 31,

Aaron Neville's Bring It on Home...The Soul Classics at 37,

Julio Iglesias' Romantic Classics at 41, Indigo Girls' Despite Our Differences at 44, Johnny Lang's Turn Around at 46, Mushroomhead's Savior Sorrow at 73 and DJ Shadow's Outsider at 94.

Among last week's big bows,

Bob Seger's Face the Promise fell seven spots to 11,

Lionel Richie's Coming Home was down 16 to 22, and the Mars Volta's Amputechture spiraled a whopping 53 spots to finish at 62 in week two.

Such declines offset the slew of new chart debuts and helped to explain why sales were down nearly 4 percent from the previous week and 2 percent from the same time last year. Year-to-date sales are down 5 percent from 2005, per SoundScan.

To recap, the Top 10 albums for the week were as follows:

1. FutureSex/LoveSounds, Justin Timberlake
2. A Thousand Different Ways, Clay Aiken
3. The Dutchess, Fergie
4. Live: Those Songs Again, Kenny Chesney
5. Continuum, John Mayer
6. B'Day, Beyonce
7. From This Moment On, Diana Krall
8. Hoodstar, Chingy
9. Extreme Behavior, Hinder
10. Modern Times, Bob Dylan