Rob Thomas Bumps Mariah Carey From Number One

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Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas topped the chart this week with his much-hyped solo debut, ...Something to Be. The album sold 252,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, to bump pop diva Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi to Number Two. This is a stronger showing than Matchbox Twenty's most recent album, 2002's More Than You Think You Are, which sold 178,000 debut Number Six. As for Carey, with another 226,000 copies sold, her two-week total comes to 630,000, giving her a good shot at hitting the 1-million mark within the next month.

The other big debuts this week came from Houston rapper Mike Jones, whose Who Is Mike Jones? moved 181,000 units to finish third; and American Idol judge Simon Cowell's boy band Il Divo, whose self-titled debut moved 147,000 units to come in at Number Four. And the latest from hardcore Southern rappers Three 6 Mafia, Choices II, hit at Number Ten (56,000).

Gwen Stefani's solo debut, Love, Angel, Music, Baby, continues to climb back up the charts five months since its release, selling another 65,000 copies to take Number Six. And it may have taken ten months, but the debut from Vegas rocker the Killers, Hot Fuss, has finally made it to Number Seven (63,000).

Meanwhile, metal act Mudvayne, whose Lost and Found was their highest debut last week, fell out of the Top Ten, to Number Eleven (55,000). And R&B crooner Faith Evans' comeback, The First Lady, has already dropped twelve spots to Number Seventeen (44,000). But the biggest loser this week was Garbage, whose latest effort, Bleed Like Me, dropped twenty places from its Number Four debut to Twenty-Four (32,000).

Next week everybody had better step back, as Bruce Springsteen's Devils and Dust hits the charts. And don't underestimate the chart potential of R&B talent Amerie's sophomore effort, Touch.

This week's Top Ten: Rob Thomas' ...Something to Be; Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi; Mike Jones' Who Is Mike Jones?; Il Divo's ; 50 Cent's The Massacre; Garbage's Bleed Like Me; Faith Evans' The First Lady; Now That's What I Call Music! Volume 18; Beck's Guero; Green Day's American Idiot; Gwen Stefani's Love, Angel, Music, Baby; the Killers' Hot Fuss.

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  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
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  MOVIES 'This Is the End' Brings the Goods
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  TV The Women of 'Mad Men'
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  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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