On The Charts: Grammy Victories Not Enough To Dethrone Jack Johnson

The Big News: Grammy wins helped propel Amy Winehouse and Herbie Hancock into the top five, but it wasn't enough to unseat last week's champ and Rolling Stone cover star Jack Johnson. Johnson's new album Sleep Through the Static sold 179,545 in its second week, while Winehouse's Back to Black sold 115,309 to jump from number twenty-four to number two. But the biggest mover was Herbie Hancock's Album of the Year-winning River: The Joni Letters which witnessed a sales jump of 967% from the previous week to catapult from 159 to five. Other albums getting Grammy boosts: Foo Fighters' Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, Taylor Swift's self-titled debut and Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden.

Debuts: Besides WOW Gospel 2008, there were only two noteworthy debuts: Simple Plan's self-titled third album at fourteen, and Widespread Panic's Free Somehow at seventy-eight.

Last Week's Heroes: Last week's top ten got all sorts of mixed up by the Grammy resurrection set, with only Johnson, Alicia Keys' As I Am (three) and Juno (six) holding their ground. Sheryl Crow's Detours and Lenny Kravitz's It Is Time For a Love Revolution dropped in the week following their debuts. In platinum news, Keys' As I Am went triple platinum, while Kanye West's Graduation crossed into double platinum territory.

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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."

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