Britney Spears' "Womanizer" zooms from #96 to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100. It's her first #1 on that flagship chart since her debut single "...Baby One More Time" hit #1 in January 1999, when Spears was just 17. Spears has  maintained such a high profile over the past decade, it's hard to imagine that she has gone this long without a #1 single. She has had four #1 albums and has been on the cover of a magazine or two, but her highest-charting Hot 100 single since 1999 was last year's "Gimme More," which peaked at #3.

This is the third time in the past two months that the record for the biggest move to #1 on the Hot 100 has been broken. In September, T.I.'s "Whatever You Like" vaulted from #71 to #1. And just last week, T.I.'s "Live Your Life" (featuring Rihanna) made an even more dramatic move, leaping from #80 to #1.

"Womanizer" debuts at #1 on Hot Digital Songs, with 286,000 paid downloads. That sets a new record for the biggest first-week sales by a female artist, barely edging out

Demi Lovato's debut album, Don't Forget, enters The Billboard 200 at #2. Lovato played the female lead in the Disney Channel's TV movie, Camp Rock. She also sang three songs on the soundtrack, which tops the million-unit sales mark this week. One of them, "This Is Me" (a duet with Joe Jonas), became the album's biggest hit. Lovato, 16, is the latest in a long line of performers to parlay exposure on Disney TV shows into hit records of their own.

Annette Funicello was just 12 in 1955 when the original The Mickey Mouse Club premiered and quickly became a baby-boomer obsession. Annette had four top 20 hits in 1959 and 1960, including "Tall Paul" and "Pineapple Princess." The latter was from her album, Hawaiiannette. (It was a more innocent time.)

Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were regulars on a revival of The Mickey Mouse Club in 1992-93 (as was future Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling.) All three burst to major pop stardom in the late '90s. Even more remarkably, all

Metallica's studio first album in more than five years, Death Magnetic, enters The Billboard 200 at #1. It's Metallica's fifth #1 album, a total topped by only one hard rock band in history. Led Zeppelin amassed seven #1 albums between Led Zeppelin II in 1969 and How The West Was Won in 2003. Van Halen is the only other hard rock band to land five #1 albums. The group, which like Metallica was formed in Los Angeles, topped the chart with five albums between 5150 in 1986 and Best Of Volume 1 in 1996.

Metallica surpasses these other top bands in two respects. Metallica is the first hard rock act to reach #1 with five consecutive #1 studio albums. Led Zeppelin and Van Halen each had four straight #1 studio sets. Also, Metallica is the top-selling hard rock band since Nielsen/SoundScan took over tracking for Billboard in May 1991. AC/DC is in second place.

Death Magnetic posted first-week sales of 490,000. Impressively, the band ran up this total in just three days, between the release of

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