Everything's going Adam Levine's way, right? He has a hit TV show, and has sung lead on three giant hits in the past year, Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" and "Payphone" and Gym Class Heroes' "Stereo Hearts." (Combined sales: 11,812,000). Well, the Billboard charts are working to keep Levine humble.  "Payphone" has so far been unable to rise above #2. And now Maroon 5's latest album Overexposed debuts at #2 behind the latest by fellow L.A. band Linkin Park. But it was close. Extremely close. If Maroon 5's album had sold just 2K more copies, it would have taken the #1 spot. This is the group's second album in a row to just miss debuting at #1. Hands All Over debuted at #2 in September 2010. If it had sold 12K more copies, it would have seized the crown from Zac Brown Band's You Get What You Give.

Levine has been on such a roll lately that he can't get too upset at just missing out on two #1 albums. Even so, most artists don't like to come in second—especially when it's this close. But it's not like Maroon 5 has never had a #1 album. Its 2007 album It Won't Be Soon Before Long debuted in the top spot with sales of 429K.

Justin Bieber's Believe enters The Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 374K. The number is off a bit from the overly rosy 400K-440K projections that were floated last week. Even so, it's the biggest first-week sales tally by any album so far this year. And it's the biggest one-week sales tally of Bieber's career. There's just one potentially awkward wrinkle. The album displaces the latest by Bieber's mentor, Usher. The R&B star's Looking 4 Myself drops to #6 after an uncharacteristically soft debut (128K) at #1 last week. That was Usher's slimmest first-week sales tally since 1997.

Of course, it's a little unfair to compare to the two artists, who are at different points in their careers. Usher first cracked the top 10 (with My Way) in January 1998—when Bieber was three years old.

Usher's Looking 4 Myself debuts at #1, but with sales of just 128K. That's a sharp drop from Usher's last full-length studio album, Raymond V. Raymond, which opened with sales of 329K in April 2010. This is the lowest first-week tally for a regular Usher studio album since My Way started with sales of 67K in September 1997.

Everybody knows that sales aren't what they were in 2004, when Usher's Confessions sold 1,096,000 copies in its first week. But even compared to 2012 albums, this is a disappointing debut. Twelve albums have enjoyed greater first-week sales so far this year. And Justin Bieber's newly-released Believe is expected to sell in the 410K to 440K range this week. (It will debut at #1 next week.)

You probably know that Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson were one of the most successful songwriting teams of the past 50 years. Their many hits include "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "You're All I Need To Get By" and "I'm Every Woman." But you may not know that Ashford & Simpson are also the most successful recording duo in the history of Billboard's soul chart, which is currently called Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.

Nineteen duos rank among the top 500 R&B hit-makers in chart history in chart researcher Joel Whitburn's indispensable book Hot R&B Songs 1942-2010. Ashford & Simpson isn't the only married couple on the list. Ike & Tina Turner, whose marriage was as turbulent as Ashford & Simpson's was harmonious, rank #2 among soul duos.