This week on the Billboard album charts it was all about debuts. I had no idea so many albums came out last week, I think mostly because I just didn't care about any of them. The big debut was Reba McIntire's Reba Duets, which knocked Kanye West's Graduation out of the top spot after merely a week. Just goes to show you who really runs this country, eh?

The parade of debuts was a embarassment of, well, mostly bad pop music (I use the term broadly to mean "popular") including: Barry Manilow (#4), James Blunt (#7), Chamillionaire (#8), KT Tunstall (#9), Twista (#10), Gloria Estefan (#25), Mark Knopfler (#26).

Eddie Vedder did well on his first mostly solo disc, the soundtrack to Into the Wild, which debuted at #11. Possibly the biggest band out of Finland (woo!) right now, H.I.M. also did well, coming in at #12 with Venus Doom. We saw a lot of punk and punk-related bands to do well, with the Motion City Soundtracks entering at #16 while Boston's own Dropkick Murphys entered at #20 (One of my favorite Murphys songs involve's former Celtics broadcaster Johnny Most calling championship winner for the Celtics in the mid 1980's with Most's signature "I've smoked 10,000 cigarettes" voice. He was the Dicky Barrett of sportscasters).

If you've missed Paul Potts (it's on the last page after the link) so far, here is something I shouldn't get weepy to, but I do:

He entered at #30 with One Chance.

And to balance off the vocal work, we even saw the Black Dahlia Murders debut in the top 100 at #72.