With a Bullet: Today's Charts

Dino is back, baby! Sure, the top of the current album chart is teeming with strained mush for the kiddies like 'High School Musical 2,' which debuted gold this week, and the unvanquishable 'Hannah Montana 2.' But Dad needs a little ring-a-ding entertainment, too! That's where the perpetually pomaded and pickled crooner Dean Martin steps in to add a little of his Vegas-smooth action to a scene overrun with treacly tween pop, plug-ugly hip-hop and plodding modern rock. How did the Rat Pack mainstay, who still rules the roost with Frank and Sammy even though they're all currently headlining at that Big Casino in the Sky, manage this feat? All he had to do was issue a new collection, titled 'Forever Cool,' and ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, there's your Top 40 placement -- and this without any help from the Mob, even!

But he didn't exactly do it alone: This album is one of those musical cut-and-paste jobs where a rogues' gallery of today's finest wannabes (Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Robbie Williams, Joss Stone, Martina McBride, even Kevin Blessed Spacey) have hitched their rickety wagons to Dino's shooting star, whilst holding on to his dinner jacket coattails for dear life as they all coast to a No. 39 debut, with 17,000 sold. No word if Disney will go into production on 'School of Hard Knocks Musical' to court this newfound older audience.

• Speaking of duets albums with Italian-American crooners, the very much still alive Tony Bennett re-entered the charts with a No. 178 placing of his own collaborative disc, the million-and-a-half-selling 'Duets: An American Classic' from 2006. And, no, there's not even a hint of Kevin Spacey on the record.


• Here at With a Bullet, what follows is becoming a bit of a broken record (or a scratched CD, or a buggy Flash drive, or whatever the young 'uns listen to the music with), but the charts are truly in a moribund state when a side project by AFI's Davey Havok and Jade Puget, calling themselves Blaqk Audio, debuts in the Top 20. The overcoiffed duo's electronica-heavy album 'Sexcells' entered the charts at No. 18, selling 29,000 copies.

The top five albums for the week ending August 19:

1. 'High School Musical 2,' Soundtrack (616,000 in 1st week)
2. 'Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus,' Soundtrack (83,000 in 8th week; 1,087,000 total)
3. 'Live at Radio City Music Hall,' Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds (70,000 in 1st week)
4. 'Now 25,' Various Artists (66,000 in 5th week; 647,000 total)
5. 'Hairspray,' Soundtrack (63,000 in 6th week; 424,000 total)