.

Toby Keith Edges Kenny Chesney for Number One

Toby Keith Edges Kenny Chesney for Number One

October 13, 2010 2:53 PM ET

In a battle of country music heavyweights, Toby Keith's Bullets in the Gun edged out Kenny Chesney's Hemingway's Whiskey to take the Number One spot on the Billboard 200. But Keith's latest LP, his fourth to grab the top spot, only sold 71,000 copies in its first week, making it the lowest-selling chart-topping debut in the history of the Nielsen SoundScan. (Glee: the Music, Volume 3: Showstoppers and Justin Bieber's My World 2.0 sold fewer copies at Number One, but not the week of their debut.) Chesney, last week's champ, settled for Number Two, selling 65,000 copies. Hot 100 mainstay Bruno Mars debuted at Number Three, moving 55,000 copies of Doo-Wops & Hooligans.

Keep up with rock's hottest photos in Random Notes

Eminem's Recovery and Zac Brown Band's You Get What You Give took four and five, respectively. One other new album managed to make the Top 10: rapper Waka Flocka Flame's debut LP Flockaveli, which sold 37,000 copies on its way to Number Six. On the digital songs chart, former adversaries Taylor Swift and Kanye West both debuted high: Swift's "Speak Now" came in at Number Two, and Kanye's "Runaway" debuted at Number Four.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

prev
Music Main Next

blog comments powered by Disqus
Stay Connected

Sign up to get Rolling Stone's daily newsletter.

Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

More Song Stories entries »