If you had told me at any point after, say, 1992 that New Kids On The Block would one day have another top five album, I would have assumed you were either a die-hard fan, the group's publicist or quite possibly delusional. But that's just what happens this week as The Block opens at #2. It's the group's first top five album since Step By Step topped the chart in June 1990.

Comebacks are always unpredictable, but it's especially hard for one-time teen idols to re-emerge. Their fans have grown up and may be a tad embarrassed by their youthful infatuations. This has hurt a long line of former teen idols, from Bobby Rydell to Bobby Sherman. Among the many others who have found it hard to overcome the stigma of being a former teen star: Fabian, David Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy and, most recently, Rick Springfield.

New Kids' nostalgic, mid-tempo ballad "Summertime" was an ideal lead single from this album. It has solid 505,000 downloads in the past 17 weeks. And three weeks ago, a Greatest Hits

We all knew that The Game's LAX and Slipknot's All Hope Is Gone were locked in a tight race for #1 on the Billboard album chart. But when the numbers came in, it was breathtaking just how tight it was. The margin between the two albums was in the low double-digits. Billboard's Keith Caulfield reported that it was the closest race between the #1 and #2 albums since the magazine began using Nielsen SoundScan sales data in May 1991. He calculated the margin between the two albums at .005%.

The winner, by this narrowest of margins, was The Game. But about 12 hours after the initial result was posted, Nielsen/SoundScan reran the numbers and declared Slipknot as the winner. It's not uncommon for Nielsen/SoundScan to adjust the final sales tallies. It's just that the tallies have rarely been so close that the final adjustment reversed the order of finish for the top two albums.

So (assuming Nielsen/SoundScan isn't going to re-rerun the numbers, and I'm not sure my heart can take it), the

Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon is one of the most phenomenal hits in the history of the music business. The album, which helped define the classic rock radio format, has sold more than 8 million copies since Nielsen/SoundScan began tracking U.S. music sales. It's #32 on the company's running list of the best-selling albums in its history.

Those facts are impressive just on the surface. Now, here's the incredible part: The album was released in March 1973. Nielsen/SoundScan began operations in May 1991. That 8 million sales figure doesn't count the album's first 18 years of sales.

Dark Side isn't the only vintage album that has kept on selling in the modern era. Sixteen of the top 200 albums on Nielsen/SoundScan's running list of the best-selling albums in its history were already "catalog" titles (at least two years old) when the company set up shop. These albums were released in the era of vinyl LPs and cassette tapes, continued to sell strongly on CD and are still popular as

Kid Rock famously elected not to make any of the songs from his smash album Rock N Roll Jesus, notably the multi-format radio smash "All Summer Long," available for download. He has profited handsomely from that decision, as his album has climbed back from a low of #82 in March to #2 this week on The Billboard 200, which is based on sales data collected by Nielsen/SoundScan.

But Kid Rock's decision created an opening for an entity known as Hit Masters to cover "All Summer Long" and release its version as a download. This week, 96,000 fans bought the cover version, nearly as many as the 101,000 fans who bought Kid Rock's album. The Hit Masters version (on the low-overhead Hip Kiddy label) ranks #5 on Hot Digital Songs, up from #32 last week.

"All Summer Long" isn't the only cover version on the current chart. The marvelous "American Boy" by Estelle featuring Kanye West is no longer available for download as a track. If you want it, you have to buy Estelle's album, Shine. As a result,

Jonas Brothers land their first #1 album on The Billboard 200. Their album, A Little Bit Longer, opens with sales of 525,000 copies. That's the highest first-week total by a teen-aged act since Britney Spears' third album, Britney, opened with sales of 746,000 in November 2001. (Spears was 19 at the time.) The brothers' new album sold more copies in its first week than their previous album, Jonas Brothers, sold in its first 16 weeks combined.

Jonas Brothers-Kevin, 20, Joe, 19 and Nick, 15-is the second group to reach #1 that included two teenagers. New Kids On The Block hit #1 with Hangin' Tough in September 1989 when two members-Joey McInytre, 16, and Jordan Knight, 19-were still in their teens. (In a neat coincidence, New Kids' Greatest Hits debuts this week at #22.)

The brothers' sophomore album, Jonas Brothers, jumps from #11 to #10. This is the first time a group has placed two albums in the top 10 simultaneously since another teen sensation, *NSYNC, scored for five weeks in late

The soundtrack to Mamma Mia! jumps to #1 in its fifth week on The Billboard 200. This is the second time in less than 20 months that a movie musical based on a Broadway show has spawned a chart-topping soundtrack. The soundtrack to Dreamgirls was #1 for two weeks in January 2007. Before that, there was a decades-long gap in Broadway-to-Hollywood transfers that yielded #1 soundtracks-stretching all the way back to Grease in 1978.

In the 52-year history of Billboard's weekly album chart, only four other chart-topping movie soundtracks were from musicals that originated on the stage. These are The Sound Of Music (1965), West Side Story (1962), South Pacific (1958), and The King And I (1956). (A shout-out to Rodgers & Hammerstein, who wrote three of these four shows.)

The comeback of the movie musical is one of the brightest (and most surprising) stories in entertainment in this decade. The trend kicked off in 2001 with the success of Baz Luhrmann's original musical, Moulin Rouge. It

What were the biggest hits of the '70s, '80s and '90s? If you go strictly by weeks at #1 on Billboard's Hot 100, the answers are Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life" for the '70s, Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" for the '80s and the Mariah Carey-Boyz II Men collaboration "One Sweet Day" for the '90s.

But you could argue that the real biggest hits of bygone decades are those songs that fans are paying to download to this day. None of the monster hits cited above are included on Nielsen/SoundScan's running list of the 200 songs with the most paid downloads.

The vast majority of the songs on that list were hits within the last few years. That's no surprise: These are the songs that have been on the radio most frequently in the period in which has downloading has really taken off. The list of the top 200 songs with the most paid downloads includes just 10 songs from the '70s, '80s, and '90s. And they're not necessarily the songs you might expect. But these are the "blasts from the past"

Rihanna's "Disturbia" jumps to #1 on Hot Digital Songs, ending a six-week run in the top spot by Katy Perry's cheeky "I Kissed A Girl." This is Rihanna's fifth #1 on the digital chart, which is more than any other artist has amassed since the chart was introduced in October 2004 (which is when downloading took off). Rihanna, 20, first topped the chart in 2005 with "Pon De Replay" and has returned to the top spot with "SOS," "Umbrella" (featuring Jay-Z), "Take A Bow" and now this hit.

Rihanna is also the only artist with eight songs on Nielsen/SoundScan's running, all-time list of the top 200 songs with the most paid downloads. Fergie, Nickelback and Chris Brown are tied for second place with five each.

Rihanna is listed on that chart with "Umbrella," "Don't Stop The Music," "SOS," "Take A Bow," "Pon De Replay," "Shut Up And Drive," "Unfaithful," and "Hate That I Love You" (featuring Ne-Yo). These eight hits have sold a combined total of 13,155,000 downloads. Fergie's five hits, all