On the Charts: Sade's "Soldier of Love" Hangs On to Number One

The Big News: With no noteworthy new releases to challenge it, Sade's Soldier of Love remained the Billboard 200's Number One album for the second consecutive week, selling an additional 190,000 copies. After two weeks, Sade's first album in over a decade has sold 694,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Lady Antebellum's Need You Now continues to be Sade's only competitor, coming in at Number Two after selling another 144,000 copies, good enough to push Need You Now platinum in only its fourth week.

After the top two, sales nosedive, with the week's Number Three album, Black Eyed Peas' The E.N.D., selling less than half the copies Lady Antebellum did. Rounding out the Top Five were Lady Gaga's The Fame, which when combined with sales of The Fame Monster puts Gaga in line for quadruple-platinum status in the coming weeks, at Number Four and Lil Wayne's Rebirth at Five with 58,000 copies sold.

Debuts: It was a bleak week for new releases as the highest-charting debut was Story of the Year's Constant way down at Number 42 with 14,000 copies. Only one other debut managed to break into the Top 100: Freeway and Jake One's Stimulus Package at 61. On the indie front, Mumford & Sons' Sign No More entered the charts at 116, Local Natives' Gorilla Manor charted at 142 and the new Wu-Tang comp Return of the Wu and Friends landed at 163.

Last Week's Heroes: Last week's bestsellers simply jostled for better sales position this week with no new releases to challenge them. TobyMac's Tonight, which was Number Six in its debut last week, dropped down to Number 16, making it the only album from last week's Top 10 not to repeat the feat. (Alicia Keys' The Element of Freedom, which rose from 12 last week to Number Seven, filled the vacancy.) With no other major releases on the horizon this week, it looks as though Sade Adu will once again be queen of the charts next week.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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