On the Charts: Reba McEntire Scores Second Number One Album

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The Big News: For the second time in her three-decade career, Reba McEntire claimed Number One on the Top 200, as her latest album Keep On Loving You outpaced the competition with 95,000 copies sold. It was McEntire's second consecutive album to top the charts after 2007's Reba: Duets with 300,000 sold in its first week. The Top Five was country-tinged, as last week's champ, George Strait's Twang, dropped to second with an additional 61,000 in sales. Third Eye Blind's first album in six years, Ursa Major, debuted at Number Three, ahead of usual suspects Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D. and Kings of Leon's Only By the Night at Four and Five respectively.

Over on the all-encompassing Comprehensive Albums chart, Michael Jackson's Number Ones remained at Number Two with another 67,000 copies sold. Essential Michael Jackson also cracked the Comprehensive Top 10 by coming in at Nine. On the Top Catalog Albums chart, Jackson continues to dominate as the King of Pop and Jackson 5-related releases take up nine of the Top 10 spots. Meanwhile, the Black Eyed Peas' stranglehold on top of the Hot 100 continued for an unprecedented 21st consecutive week as "I Gotta Feeling" once again ruled.

Debuts: Outside of Reba and 3EB, no other new releases managed to penetrate the Top 10. Sean Paul came the closest as Imperial Blaze entered the charts at Number 12 with 28,000. Ledisi's fourth album Turn Me Loose was a step behind Sean Paul, coming in at 14 with 27,000 sold. Mute Math's Amistice was the last of the debuts in the Top 20, breaking in at 18. Further down, Quentin Tarantino, the king of the soundtrack, and his David Bowie-and-Ennio Morricone-powered Inglourious Basterds LP premiered at 132.

Last Week's Heroes: While Strait's Twang proved resilient, Neil Diamond's Hot August Night NYC dropped slightly from Number Two to Six, but only lost 32 percent of its first week sales. Cobra Starship's Hot Mess wasn't as fortunate as the "Sweet Caroline" singer, plummeting from Number Four to 30 after in its second week, losing 68 percent in sales. The rest of the Top 10 remained largely the same with the exception of Maxwell's BLACKsummers'night, which fell out of the Top 10 for the first time in seven weeks, finishing at Number 11. Finally, after 47 weeks on the chart, T.I.'s Paper Trail went double platinum.

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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