On the Charts: Chesney Takes Top Spot, LaMontagne Debuts Big

The Big News: Kenny Chesney took over the sales throne, selling 176,000 copies of his Lucky Old Sun and ending T.I.'s two-week reign as Paper Trail dropped to second place. Ray LaMontagne enjoyed his best debut ever as Gossip in the Grain placed at number three. Despite a sales decrease from last week, Metallica's Death Magnetic rose from five to four, switching places with Jennifer Hudson's self-titled debut.

Debuts: U.K. mope rockers Keane and their Perfect Symmetry took seventh place and Lucinda Williams' Little Honey rounded out our top ten debuts at number nine. Further down the list, Ingrid Michaelson's Be OK entered at 35, Copeland's You Are My Sunshine grabbed 48 and Christian metal act Haste the Day settled in at 68 with Dreamer.

Last Week's Heroes: It was another slow week for sales as the music world braced for the arrival of AC/DC's Black Ice and the unofficial kickoff to the blockbuster album season. The biggest casualties from last week? Oasis' Dig Out Your Soul plummeted from five to 36 and Rise Against's Appeal to Reason dropped fell from three to 19.

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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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