On the Charts: "High School Musical 2" Scores Major Debut, Dave Matthews and Hip-Hop Heavyweights Hang In

The Big News: It was a tyker revolution this week, as kids invaded record stores to buy the soundtrack to High School Musical 2, which sold 615,361 copies in its first week of sales -- the second-biggest debut of the year behind Linkin Park's 622,827 opening week sales of Minutes to Midnight. The huge opening wasn't a shock, though: the Disney Channel's Friday-night debut of HSM2 attracted 17.2 million viewers, making it the most-watched basic-cable show ever. While they were in the buying mood, tweens (or, more likely, their kind parents) snapped up other kid-friendly titles, as the Hannah Montana 2 soundtrack jumped up to number two, moving 82,607 units, and the original High School Musical sountrack improved from number twenty-eight to sixteen.

Debuts: Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds' Live at Radio City Music Hall finished at number three, selling 69,792 copies, while AFI's Davey Havok's side project Blaqk Audio entered the chart at number eighteen on sales of 29,057.

Last Week's Sales Heroes?: Hip-hop top-tenners UGK, Plies, Common and T.I. nearly all held onto top-ten positions this week, too, coming in at numbers six, nine, ten and eleven, respectively.

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

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