On the Charts: Knocking Josh Groban Out of the Top Spot Proves Harder Than Finding a Nintendo Wii

The Big News: Josh Groban's Noel sold another 581,470 copies in its ninth week of release to stay atop the Billboard chart for a third straight week. Alicia Keys and the Eagles played see-saw once again, as Keys' As I Am reclaimed the Number Two spot with 234,370 copies sold, while the Eagles swooped to three with 204,490 copies. In the battle of the American Idols, the result was -- a draw. Blake Lewis' Audio Day Dream debuted at number ten, the same spot Jordin Sparks' self-titled debut landed at two weeks ago.

Debuts: At ten, Lewis has the highest-charting debut of the week. Other than that, hip-hop ruled, with four rap debuts entering the charts within the top fifty: Scarface's M.A.D.E. at seventeen, DJ Drama's mixtape Gangsta Grillz at twenty-six, Wyclef Jean's Carnival 2 at twenty-eight and Ghostface Killah's The Big Doe Rehab at forty-one. The 817th Tupac greatest-hits release, the sold-separately Thug and Life, debuted at sixty-five and seventy-seven respectively. This trend will likely continue, with new albums from Wu-Tang Clan, Gucci Mane, the Dream and Beanie Sigel dominating this week's release calendar.

Last Week's Heroes: Didn't move around much. Last week's top ten, despite some minor repositioning, stayed largely the same, with Mannheim Steamroller dropping from ten to eleven to make room for Lewis, and country's Taylor Swift switching places with Celine Dion to go from twelve to nine. Last week's top debut, Pitbull's The Boatlift, sank from fifty to 134. If only Pitbull had a fraction of Groban's Oprah love.

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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.”

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