On the Charts: Keith Urban Narrowly Beats Prince to Number One

The Big News: Both Keith Urban's Defying Gravity and Prince's three-disc Target exclusive surpassed industry projections in the battle for Number One, but in the end a mere 3,000 copies separated the two and Urban scored the first Number One album of his career. Defying Gravity sold 171,000 copies while Prince's LOtUSFLOW3R/MPLSoUND/Elixer drew 168,000 Target customers. Considering Prince gave out copies of his new album to anyone who signed up for his LOtUSFLOW3R Website and the the fact that the records were only available at one retailer, he was at a bit of a sales disadvantage. Diana Krall's Quiet Nights landed at Number Three, marking the best debut of her career, while last week's champ NOW! 30 dropped to Four. The Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack rounded out the Top Five.

Debuts: In the battle of big rap releases, UGK's UGK 4 Life beat out Flo Rida's R.O.O.T.S., placing at Six and Eight respectively. Despite having the biggest single of the year by a landslide in "Right Round," Flo Rida couldn't match the opening-week sales of his debut album Mail On Sunday, selling 55,000 copies to his debut's 86,000. Also, Bow Wow's New Jack City II scored 16, Gavin DeGraw's Free claimed 19 and Queensryche's American Soldier grabbed 25. Yeah Yeah Yeahs jumped from 160 to 22 in their first week of physical release.

Last Week's Heroes: Jim Jones' Prey IV Reign had the biggest fall, dropping from Nine to 40. After a second consecutive week at Number One two weeks ago, Kelly Clarkson's All I Ever Wanted finds itself out of the Top 10, falling from Five to 14. Neil Young, Jadakiss and Rascal Flatts will duke it out in stores this week, and expect also to see an influx of country in the Top 10 thanks to the Academy of Country Music awards from last weekend.

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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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