On the Charts: All the Solo Ladies Rule as Taylor Swift Returns to Number One

The Big News: Solo women artists rule the SoundScan chart this week with Taylor Swift, Britney Spears and Beyoncé locking down the one, two and three spots, respectively — while albums from Guns n' Roses and the Killers continue their sales slide in their third weeks (to 25 and 29). Spears' reign at Number One lasted only one week as Taylor Swift's powerful Fearless sold another 248,000 copies to Circus' 200,000. With no big name Christmas albums (like Josh Groban's Noel last year) Fearless appears to be the go-to stocking stuffer for parents who don't want to give the gift of Spears' "If You Seek Amy." Nickelback's Dark Horse is making the slow march towards big numbers by moving up to four and the Twilight soundtrack rounded out the top five with 131,000 copies sold.

Debuts: In what was probably the worst week for debuts in 2008, no first-weekers cracked the Top 10. Musiq Soulchild's On My Radio and Common's Universal Mind Control slotted at 11 and 12, respectively.

Last Week's Heroes: Despite falling to second place, Spears' Circus moved closer to platinum with a total of 706,000 copies sold in two weeks. Nine of last week's Top 10 remained there, with only Akon's Freedom dropping down from seven to 18. Next week, we'll find out if Fall Out Boy and Folie a Deux can muster up enough sales to unseat Taylor Swift.

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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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