On the Charts: Sugarland Beat Out Miley For Top Spot

The Big News: A week after running-up to Miley Cyrus, country band Sugarland overtook the teen sensation to claim the number one spot as their Love on the Inside pushed 171,000 in its second week. Cyrus' Breakout settled for second, selling another 162,000 copies. The top five was rounded out by the usual suspects, with the Mamma Mia soundtrack, Kid Rock's Rock N Roll Jesus and Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III claiming the remaining places. Weezy's TC3 also pushed past the two million sales after eight weeks on the charts.

Debuts: Praise rockers Third Day led a relatively weak crop of debuts, selling 74,000 to lock up sixth place. The fourteenth installment of the venerable Kidz Bop series grabbed eight. System of a Down side project Scars on Broadway took 17 with their self-titled debut, Rick Springfield managed to claim 28 with his new album Venus in Overdrive and Alice Cooper's Along Came a Spider crept in at 53.

Last Week's Heroes: Same last week's heroes as last week, except they sold a lot less copies this time around. The top five all stayed in the top five with some reshuffling. Despite a 45% drop in sales from the previous week, Sugarland still somehow claimed the top spot, likely because Miley Cyrus dropped 56% in sales. Only Kid Rock managed to stave off any percentile decrease with sales up 3% and a firm hold on the four slot in its astonishing 43rd week on the chart.

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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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