On the Charts: Taylor Swift On Top, Archuleta and Aguilera Trailing

The Big News: Taylor Swift fought off other tween sensations David Archuleta and the Twilight soundtrack to grab the top spot, with her Fearless selling 592,000 copies to crush the competition. American Idol runner-up David Archuleta's self-titled debut settled in at two with 183,000 albums in a debut-heavy week that found six new releases penetrating the top ten. Now! Volume 29 stole third place away from T-Pain's Thr33 Ringz, with both releases surpassing the 100,000 sold mark. Last week's top seller, the Twilight soundtrack, fell to fifth but is expected to rise again when the film hits theatres this Friday.

Debuts: Christina Aguilera's Target-exclusive greatest hits collection Keeps Gettin' Better claimed nine, Seal spilled his Soul at 13 and the Best of Now! That's What I Call Music compilation grabbed 32. Further down the chart, the Smiths' best-of took 98 and Jedi Mind Tricks and their History of Violence settled in at 169.

Last Week's Heroes: With last week marking the beginning of the parade of huge fourth quarter album releases, the top ten was completely upended. The biggest victim of the debut stampede was Hinder's Take It To The Limit, which descended from four to 16. Hinder's sophomore album is way off the pace that helped their debut become triple platinum. Pink's Funhouse and John Legend's Evolver also found themselves out of the top 10 for the first time. With this week's release of albums by David Cook, Beyonce and Nickelback, this weekend's release of Chinese Democracy and Monday's drop of Kanye West, the Killers and Ludacris, next week's chart promises to be a royal rumble to win the number one.

Related Stories:
• Album Review: Taylor Swift, Fearless
• Album Review: David Archuleta, David Archuleta
• Christina Aguilera Looks Forward to "Futuristic" New Album

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
• 
  TV 10 Shows to Watch This Summer
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter