Green Day took the top spot in this week’s Billboard 200 chart, selling 215,000 copies of 21st Century Breakdown, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Bear in mind that Breakdown dropped last Friday, instead of the traditional record-release day of Tuesday, so that figure only covers one weekend’s sales — and many bands would be elated to move 215,000 units over an entire week. Well done, Green Day, you aging punks, you. I’ll be surprised if we don’t see you again near the top of the next chart once your first full sales week rolls to a close.
Cam’Ron’s Crime Pays opened a couple of spots from the top with 43,000 copies sold. That’s a substantial comedown from the numbers he used to put up a few years back, but it was still enough to crack the Top 3. The next-highest new album this week came from Paul Wall, whose Fast Life made it to No. 15 with 22,000; four spots below was Steve Earle, with 18,000 of Townes. And those were the only debuts in the latest Top 20. Any disappointments or pleasant discoveries for you in those numbers?
More from EW’s Music Mix:
Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong: The Music Mix Interview
Chrisette Michele edges out Ciara on the albums chart
Bob Dylan tops the albums chart in a slow week
Tonight, after American Idol, Fox premieres its much-anticipated new show choir-themed, high school-set dramedy Glee. (Read: A cappella power ballads abound!) I’ve seen it, folks, and let me just tell you: It’s the most fun (although totally populist) thing on TV, musically, since way back when American Idol resembled something closer to an actual talent contest. And don’t let TV’s last attempt at a musical series — that’d be CBS’s hot mess Viva Laughlin, starring Hugh Jackman, from two seasons back — taint your idea of what Glee might be. 
Go ahead and have your sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, Music Mixers — but hold the bacon. PETA’s annual list of hot-to-trot celebrities who faithfully abstain from eating things that trot (and gallop, and oink, and moo) 
Think lazy, heat-rippled days at the beach; bright sticky popsicles melting in sugar-stained fists; the unmistakable smell of charcoal burning on the grill… ’tis the season, Music Mixers, and that can only mean one thing: Summer singles. Whether they’ll be bumping from passing car windows, strobe-lit clubs, or the house party down the block, the following tracks seem destined to to own the sunniest months of 2009.
Twilight, Shmilight. HBO viewers live (or do they undie??) for the would-be neck-biters of 
