On the Charts: Taylor Swift Enjoys Last Week On Top With U2's "Horizon" on the Horizon

The Big News: With U2's No Line on the Horizon out this week, Taylor Swift's Fearless certainly enjoyed its last week atop the charts, selling another 73,000 copies to remain Number One. A pair of debuts entered in the two and three slots, with Lamb of God's Wrath moving 67,000 units and — despite its poor showing at the box office — The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Experience selling just under 50,000 copies. As we predicted here last week, Oscar domination helped the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack catapult from 22 to four. Nickelback's Dark Horse rounds out the top five.

Debuts: With the help of Chris Isaak's new talk show, Mr. Lucky bowed at 29. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks Live debuted at 33, K'Naan's Troubadour took 32, rapper Joe Budden landed at 42 with Padded Room and the latest War Child compilation hopefully benefited some people by placing 107th.

Last Week's Heroes: The Gap Band's Charlie Wilson and his Uncle Charlie took the largest tumble, falling from two to 20 thanks a 66 percent decrease in sales. Lady Gaga's Fame continues to move in a good way, going from 26 to 10 to seven over the course of two weeks thanks to her singles "Just Dance" and "Pokerface." Other than that, there wasn't much movement in the upper tier as everyone braced for the welcome return of Bono to the charts. We'll find out the true damage of Universal Music's accidental leak of No Line on the Horizon next Wednesday.

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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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