Prince and Keith Urban Battle for Number One on the Charts

It's going to come down to the wire for the top spot on the charts next week as Prince and Keith Urban are locked in a close race for Number One. According to Reuters, "industry prognosticators" anticipate Urban's Defying Gravity will edge out Prince's triple attack of LOtUSFLOW3R, MPLSoUND and Bria Valente's Elixer. Both albums are expected to sell in the neighborhood of 150,000 copies, though Urban might top out at 160,000.

LOtUSFLOW3R would be Prince's fifth U.S. chart-topping album, following Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, the Batman soundtrack and, most recently, 2006's 3121. Even if it doesn't claim the top spot, the LOtUS package will undoubtedly sell more than the 96,000 copies Prince's previous album Planet Earth mustered in 2007. Urban has never claimed a Number One spot, settling for Number Three on both of his previous albums.

If Prince does win the sales race, the victory will likely come with some kind of industry asterisk: The LOtUSFLOW3R package was released on Sunday, March 29th, giving Prince an additional two days of sales and a nine-day debut week. However, Keith Urban isn't leashed to an exclusive deal with Target like Prince is, making Defying Gravity more widely available. Plus, the amount of copies purchased via membership to Prince's newly launched LOtUSFLOW3R Website likely won't be included in his final tally. One thing is for certain, and that's that Now! 30 probably won't be topping the charts again.

For more on the LOtUSFLOW3R package, check out this week's New Music Report for Rolling Stone's take on the Purple One's three-disc set.

Related Stories:

• Prince Pulls Out Three Different Sets for L.A. Triple-Gig Marathon
• Prince Launches "Lotusflow3r" Website With New Albums, Riddle
• Prince Breaks Out Beatles, Rolling Stones at Oscar Party

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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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