On the Charts: Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Britney Spears Lead the Charge in Big Sales Week

The Big News: Taylor Swift managed to keep the top spot on love lockdown for yet another week, selling 262,000 more copies of Fearless (which went double platinum). Platinum was the theme of the week as Britney Spears' Circus, Nickelback's Dark Horse, Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak and the Twilight soundtrack all crossed the million-selling plateau on their way to charting at three through six, respectively. Beyoncé's I Am... Sasha Fierce jumped from five to second place thanks to an additional 210,000 copies sold, while Kanye leapt from 11 to five thanks to that repackaged 808s with the new artwork. With four of the top six releases geared toward females, it's comforting to know women are at least still purchasing CDs.

Debuts: At 81, the self-titled album from a band called Brutha charted. That was the only debut on the entire Top 200 this week.

Last Week's Heroes: Keyshia Cole's A Different Me and Jamie Foxx's Intuition couldn't sustain their big debut weeks as Cole dropped from two to seven and Foxx followed from three to nine. Last week's anti-hero, Fall Out Boy's Folie a Deux, continued to chart with a whimper, falling from eight to 18. And Guns n' Roses' Chinese Democracy shockingly gained momentum, gaining from 33 to 25 thanks to a 9 percent sales increase. With no major releases on deck for these next four Tuesdays (yesterday included), and barring some out-of-left-field Juno-like success story, it's conceivable that Swift might own the Number One spot until Bruce Springsteen's Working on a Dream comes out on January 27th.

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

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