Beatles Top Stale Album Chart

With the Backstreet Boys having apparently thrown in the towel and Jennifer Lopez's new album not due for another couple of weeks, the formidable task of putting heat on the Beatles' unstoppable 1 has fallen to one Orville Richard Burrell, a.k.a. Shaggy. The dancehall reggae star's Hotshot moved another notch up the charts to No. 2 last week, by-passing the Now That's What I Call Music! 5 compilation with sales of 185,636 copies but still falling 82,915 copies short of the Beatles' 1, which moved another 268,551 copies to rack up its sixth (non-consecutive) week as the best-selling album in America.

According to Soundscan, the Beatles' best-of collection sold another 268,551 copies in its eighth week in stores, making it the first No. 1 album of 2001 and bringing its total U.S. sales up to 5,331,851. The set's not doing too shabby overseas, either, with European sales now at the seven million mark.

Apart from adding another No. 1 in the Beatles' chart run, last week's album chart was a relatively stale one as record sales continued their post-Christmas/pre-new releases slide. It was a bruising week on the Backstreet Boys, who saw their Black and Blue album free fall from No. 9 to an even more humbling No. 15 with sales of 71,751 copies. That means the former undisputed kings of teen pop lasted a mere six weeks in the Top 10 this time around, and only two of those at the top.

Among those benefiting from the Backstreet Boys' exodus (or perhaps contributing to it) was Dido, whose No Angel album moved into the Top 10 for the first time in its year-and-a-half existence. The album claimed the No. 9 spot with sales of 88,603 copies, putting it just above Lenny Kravitz's 88,410-selling Greatest Hits, which re-entered the Top 10 at No. 10. The only other significant chart action last week was by a pair of soundtracks; the R&B-centric Save the Last Dance For Me, featuring tracks by the likes of K-Ci & JoJo and Lucy Pearl, jumped from No. 76 to No. 41, and the Depression-era themed, T Bone Burnett-produced O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack rocketed from No. 192 to No. 90.

This week's Top 10: The Beatles' 1 (268,551 copies sold); Shaggy's Hotshot (185,636); Now That's What I Call Music! 5 (163,947); Snoop Dogg's Tha Last Meal (123,206); Limp Bizkit's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (122,149); Creed's Human Clay (115,568); OutKast's Stankonia (110,520); Sade's Lovers Rock (100,346); Dido's No Angel (88,603) and Lenny Kravitz's Greatest Hits (88,410).

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
• 
  TV 10 Shows to Watch This Summer
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette | 1973

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter