On the Charts: Usher Says "Here I Stand" On Top in Sales

The Big News: Usher's Here I Stand stood atop the charts in its debut week, cruising to number one with 444,000 copies sold. Here I Stand had one of the best debut weeks of 2008, but it fell well short of the 1.1 million copies Usher's Confessions did in its first week in 2004. Moviegoers and book clubs helped push the Sex and the City soundtrack to the two spot with 66,000 copies, while last week's one and two, 3 Doors Down's self-titled and Bun B's Il Trill, dropped to three and four. At five, Leona Lewis' Spirit proved more durable than fellow divas Mariah and Madonna.

Debuts: Outside of Usher and Sarah Jessica Parker, it was a slow week for debuts, as only Al Green's Lay It Down managed to crack the top ten. Further down the list, Cyndi Lauper's Bring Ya to the Brink grabbed number 41, Spiritualized's Songs in A&E took 157 and Plies' Real Testament bowed at 187.

Last Week's Heroes: The top ten from the previous week stay mostly the same with a little reshuffling. Madonna's Hard Candy dropped out of the top ten for the first time to land at 11, while last week's number three Julianna Hough and her self-titled debut fell to 16. But the biggest plummet was reserved for Green Day offshoot Foxboro Hot Tubs, who had their Stop Drop & Roll sink from 21 to 103.

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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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