On the Charts: Jack Johnson Dominates for Third Straight Week

The Big News: Rolling Stone cover star Jack Johnson continues his charts dominance, staying at number one for a third consecutive week with an additional 104,890 copies sold. Officially, Alicia Keys' As I Am placed number two, despite being outsold by Michael Jackson's twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Thriller, which is ineligible from chart placement because it's a "catalog album." Amy Winehouse's post-Grammy hangover still hasn't worn off, as Back To Black grabbed the third spot. Moviegoers found a soundtrack they liked more than Juno, as Step Up 2: The Streets stepped up to number five. Sara Bareilles' Little Voice also had a big week, making the jump from fifteen to seven.

Debuts: Kidz Bop 13 debuted at four, further proving that little kids don't know how to illegally download. Dipset's Jim Jones' Harlem's American Gangster entered at nineteen despite being released as a mixtape last November. On the rock beat, the Raveonettes' Lust Lust Lust placed 108, Ray Davies' Working Man's Cafe took 140 and the Mountain Goats' critically-acclaimed Heretic Pride squeezed in at 195.

Last Week's Heroes: The Grammy bloom blew off Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters as the album fell from five to sixteen. Predictably, the Grammys nominees compilation also dropped from four to seventeen. It was a pretty bad week on all fronts, with only one non-debuting album in top sixty (Sara Bareilles) actually experiencing a growth in sales from the previous week.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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