Britney Spears landed squarely between her labelmates *NSync and the Backstreet Boys last week, scoring the second-highest first-week sales of the SoundScan era with her new album, Oops! ... I Did It Again.

Spears' album (RealAudio excerpt of title track) sold a whopping 1,319,193 copies, coming in behind *NSync's No Strings Attached, which sold 2.4 million copies in its first week of release in March. The Backstreet Boys sold 1.1 million copies of their album Millennium in its first week last year.

The singer said earlier this year that she was trying to keep her expectations for the new album's sales figures in check. "I can ... just pray about it and hope that it will do the same, but it's kind of hard to follow up ... Baby One More Time (RealAudio excerpt), which has sold, like, 17 million worldwide."

Seattle rockers Pearl Jam's new album, Binaural, landed at #2, selling a comparatively meager 225,973 copies. The album includes the single "Nothing As It Seems" (RealAudio excerpt).

New Orleans rappers Big Tymers came in at #3 with their newly released album, I Got That Work, while Whitney Houston's greatest hits double-CD had the next-highest debut at #5.

Jam-rockers Phish came in at #12 with their new album, Farmhouse, and rapper DJ Quik landed at #18 with his new release, Balance & Options.

Making up the rest of the top 10 are: *NSync's No Strings Attached at #4, the "Mission: Impossible 2" soundtrack at #6, Sisqó's Unleash the Dragon at #7, Santana's Supernatural at #8, Creed's Human Clay at #9 and Joe's My Name is Joe at #10.

Teen group Hanson, meanwhile, saw their new album, This Time Around, slip all the way down to #72 after debuting at #19 last week. The album sold just under 20,000 copies last week.

Veteran experimental rockers Sonic Youth's new album, NYC Ghosts & Flowers, debuted at #172, while Veruca Salt debuted at #171 with Resolver, their first album without singer/guitarist Nina Gordon.

Rockers the Smashing Pumpkins, who announced Tuesday that they will break up at the end of the year, saw their latest album, MACHINA/the machines of God, slip from #150 to #159.

(An earlier version of this story was published at 3:48 p.m. EDT Wednesday, May 24, 2000.)