Susan Boyle Knocks Kanye Out of Top Spot

Kanye West falls to Number 7

Susan Boyle's The Gift was the Number 1 album in the country last week, displacing Kanye West's My Beautiful Twisted Fantasty , which dropped to Number 7.

Photos: Kanye West's Career Highs — and Lows

The holiday retail market catapulted several other albums ahead of West's in the top 10. Taylor Swift's Speak Now went from Number 3 to Number 2, 10-year-old opera singer Jackie Evancho's Christmas LP debuted at Number 3, and two Glee albums — a Christmas LP and volume 4 of the soundtrack series — debuted at Number 4 and Number 5, respectively.

The Black Eyed Peas The Beginning debuted at a surprisingly soft Number 6, and Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday, which came in at Number 2 last week, slipped to Number 8.

Photos: Nicki Minaj's Best Looks

Subo Still Super [Hits Daily Double]

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

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.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter