On the Charts: Metallica Dominate, Jessica Simpson Debuts Strong

The Big News: Metallica only needed four days to storm to the top of the charts, as the current cover boys sold 490,000 copies since its Friday release. While the shortened week prevented the band from setting a personal one-week sales record, they did manage to sell 400,000 more copies than the number two record, Young Jeezy's The Recession. Kid Rock's Rock N' Roll Jesus stayed embedded at three, while Jessica Simpson's country music crossover Do You Know scored fourth with 65,000 copies sold. Slipknot's All Hope Is Gone rounded out our top five.

Debuts: LL Cool J's Exit 13 led the second wave of debuts, coming in at nine with 44,000 copies, or a third of the copies LL's Todd Smith sold in its first week in 2006. Supertramp-samplers Gym Class Heroes only managed to muster the 14 spot with their new album The Quilt. Comedian Mitch Hedburg's posthumous Do You Believe In Gosh? charted at 18, Kardinal Offishall's Not 4 Sale claimed 40 and Okkervil River's The Stand-Ins placed at 42.

Last Week's Heroes: Outside of the debuts, this week's top ten shared a striking resemblance with last week's with one notable exception: Lil Wayne cashed in on his VMA and SNL performances as Tha Carter III bumped up from 10 to eight thanks to a 2% sales increase. The biggest loser had to be the New Kids on the Block, as their The Block spiraled from two down to 16 thanks to a 72% sales decrease.

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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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