On the Charts: T.I. Follows "Paper Trail" Past Metallica For Top Spot

The Big News: Debuts were the big story this week, with six new albums crashing this week's top ten. T.I.'s Paper Trail set the pace, selling 568,000 copies in its first week to dethrone Metallica's Death Magnetic. Death dropped down to number five, as Jennifer Hudson's self-titled album, Robin Thicke's Something Else and James Taylor's Covers followed T.I. in the second, third and fourth positions. There was consolation for Metallica, however, as Death Magnetic surpassed the platinum-selling plateau in its fourth week.

Debuts: Jack Mannequin's Glass Passenger and the self-titled record by former American Idol contestant Kellie Pickler finished in eight and nine. Ben Folds' Way To Normal narrowly missed the top ten, selling 40,000 copies on the way to 11. Further down the charts, the Grateful Dead live album Rocking the Cradle-Egypt 1978 placed at 154 and Tom Morello/The Nightwatchman's The Fabled City came in at 179.

Last Week's Heroes: There was a lot of upheaval to make room for the six debuts. One victim was Demi Lovato's Don't Forget, which dropped all the way to 16 after entering the charts at two last week. The Pussycat Dolls' Doll Domination and the Kings of Leon's Only For the Night suffered similar fates, with PCD tumbling from four to 17 and Kings falling from five to 20.

Related Stories:
• New Music Report: T.I.'s Paper Trail
• New Reviews: James Taylor, T.I., Tom Morello and More
• Guns, Feds and Kids: T.I. Makes a Comeback

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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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