Zac Brown Band Beat Out Maroon 5 for Number One

Zac Brown Band can add to this year's Best New Artist Grammy the distinction of beating a tough field of competitors for the Number One spot on the Billboard 200: Their second album, You Get What You Give, sold 153,000 copies in its debut week. Maroon 5, who won the same Grammy in 2005, had to settle for second place; the new Hands All Over , moved 142,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That's a major drop for Maroon 5 compared to the opening week sales (429,000) of It Won't Be Soon Before Long which debuted at number one in 2007. Linkin Park, who topped the chart last week, came in at number three as sales of A Thousand Suns declined 71 percent.

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Two more debuts made their way into the Top Five this week: Selena Gomez and the Scene took number four with 66,000 copies of A Year Without Rain sold, while Santana's guest-heavy Guitar Heaven came in at number five. The John Legend and the Roots collaboration Wake Up! debuted at Number Eight and 63,000 copies. Overall, total album sales were down six percent from last week and down 13 percent when stacked up to the same week last year.

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  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
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  MOVIES 'Great Gatsby' Is a Crushing Disappointment
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  TV Why You Should Watch 'Happy Endings'
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  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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