Eminem Holds on to Number One for Fourth Straight Week

For the fourth straight week, Eminem has held on to the Number One spot on the Billboard 200. The MC's latest album Recovery moved 195,000 copies, making Em the first artist since Susan Boyle to lock the top spot for four straight weeks. The rapper's dominance this week was fueled by the success of the single "Love the Way You Lie" (featuring Rihanna), which unseated Katy Perry's "California Gurls" for the Number One spot on the Hot 100.

No other artists came close to matching Eminem's big week. Korn's Korn III: Remember Who You Are arrived at Number Two selling 63,000 copies, three times less the amount than Em's total sales. Korn's last album (2007's Untitled) also debuted at Number Two, although their last LP sold nearly double the copies of Korn III. Drake's Thank Me Later hung around at Number Three with 50,000 units sold. Christian rock group Newsboys scored Number Four with Born Again and Justin Bieber rounded out the Top Five with My World 2.0.

The bottom of the Top 10 was packed with debuts. Sting's classical disc Symphonicities placed Number Six with 36,000 copies. Country musician Jerrod Niemann came in at Number Seven with Judge Jerrod & the Hung Jury while Hellyeah's Stampede debuted at Number Eight. Despite success with the massive single "Paper Planes" and recent controversy with the press, M.I.A.'s Maya opened at a disappointing Number Nine. The rapper's third LP sold only 28,000 — 1,000 copies less than the first-week sales of her last LP, Kala.

Overall, album sales were down 23 percent compared to the same week in 2009.

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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.”

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