On the Charts: "Juno" Turns Oscar Nods Into Week's Best-Selling Album

The Big News: After four weeks on the chart, the Juno soundtrack finally claimed the top spot, selling 64,381 copies to overtake Alicia Keys' As I Am, which fell to two. The Moldy Peaches-heavy Juno disc received a push after the film and its star (Ellen Page), director and screenwriter were all nominated for Academy Awards, which means the nation's best-selling record has a total-sales figure that can barely match most chart-toppers' opening-week figures. Natasha Bedingfield, coming off the mega-hit "Unwritten," watched her new album Pocketful of Sunshine debut at three. Mary J. Blige's Growing Pains and Radiohead's In Rainbows rounded out the top five.

Debuts: After Bedingfield, the big debut was Cat Power's covers album Jukebox -- its number twelve arrival marks her career-best debut. Other notable entries include the Drive-By Truckers' Brighter Than Creations Dark at thirty-six, Breaking artist Black Mountain's second album In The Future at 101 and jam band moe.'s Sticks and Stones at 119.

Last Week's Heroes: John Legend and Raheem DeVaughn exited the top ten and introduced themselves to the top thirty. Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad surpassed a million copies sold after thirty-four weeks on the chart (current location: number forty-five).

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

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.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter