On the Charts: Taylor Swift Holds Number One As Sales Slip Yet Again

The Big News: The new year's record-sales nightmare continues — even this week's Number One album (Taylor Swift's Fearless, of course) was 37,000 albums shy of breaking the 100,000 mark. Fearless sold 63,000 copies, 12 percent less than the 71,000 she moved last week. Beyoncé's I Am… Sasha Fierce reclaimed the Number Two spot thanks to a second consecutive 49,000-selling week, while Nickelback's Dark Horse settled into third. A debut finally managed to crack the top five, as the Notorious soundtrack took fourth place. Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak rounded out the top five. And perhaps thanks to the return of American Idol, David Cook's self-titled LP jumped from 18 to 10.

Debuts: Outside of Notorious, the only other rookies making noise on the charts were the NOW! Motown collection at 13 and the Derek Trucks Band's Already Free at 19 (read a Q&A with the guitarist here). Outside the top 20, Heather Headley and her Audience of One entered at 27, and My Morning Jacket's live iTunes record charted at 94.

Last Week's Heroes: We didn't think things could get any worse after last week's dismal sales, but somehow they did. In total, the Top 200 sold a mere 1.6 million, roughly 114,000 less than last week's combined numbers. There is hope on the horizon, however. First, we'll find out if all the hype and acclaim for Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion can translate into sales. Then next week, Bruce Springsteen's Working on a Dream will attempt to save the industry from its harsh slump.

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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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