July 24, 2008	Thursday	Rajab 20, 1429

PARIS: France’s first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy shot to the top of the charts with her latest album in its first full week on sale, a music industry body said on Wednesday.

The album has generated massive interest because it is the first by the Italian-born former model turned pop star since her whirlwind romance with President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom she married in February less than three months after they met.

The new record, entitled “Comme si de rien n’etait” (As if nothing had happened) and released under the first lady’s maiden name Carla Bruni, hit the shelves on July 11 in a blaze of publicity.

The SNEP, an industry group that tracks record sales, said that in the week starting July 13 the album knocked Viva la Vida, the latest offering from British band Coldplay, off the top spot in the charts.

The SNEP did not, however, specify how many copies of the album had been sold. Bruni-Sarkozy has said she wrote the lyrics of the new songs partly before she met Sarkozy and partly since they fell in love. This has prompted intense scrutiny of the lyrics by French media obsessed with the presidential love life.—Reuters