Charts Afire: Ciara Evolves, Gwen Slumps and More

Proving that rumors of transexuality do not detrimentally effect album sales, crunk diva Ciara topped the charts with her second album, Evolution. The disc debuted at Number One this week, moving 339,062 units.

In other chart news, Eminem's mixtape The Re-Up did poorly by Shady standards but as mixtapes go, a Number Two charting (with 310,160 units sold) is nothing to sneer at. Golden girl Gwen Stefani scored the Number Three spot with Sweet Escape, though with 310,160 copies sold in its first week, the album fell astoundingly short of its predecessor, last year's multiplatinum Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Inexplicably, Simon Cowell's operatic pop invention Il Divo jumped 10 spots from last week — Siempre landed at Number Six and sold 166,065 copies since its last chart showing at Number Sixteen. And Jay-Z's Kingdom Come has come and gone, falling from Number Six last week to Number 15 this week. Hova, what happened?

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter