For the first time ever, female solo artists occupy the top five spots on The Billboard 200. Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream logs its sixth week at #1; Lady Gaga's The Fame surges from #6 to #2; Alicia Keys' The Element Of Freedom rebounds from #4 to #3; Mary J. Blige's Stronger withEach Tear drops from #2 to #4; and Taylor Swift's Fearless holds at #5.

The previous record for female domination was set on April 21, 1990, when female solo artists held down the top four spots on The Billboard 200. The albums were, in order: Bonnie Raitt's Nick Of Time, Sinead O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 and Paula Abdul's Forever Your Girl.

On two other occasions, women locked up the top four spots, though, in each case, female solo artists accounted for just three of those spots. On Feb. 10, 1996, the all-female Waiting To Exhale soundtrack finished ahead of albums by Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette and Mariah Carey. On Jan. 12, 2003, Norah Jones, Jennifer Lopez and Avril Lavigne finished ahead of Dixie Chicks.
I Dreamed A Dream is the first album to spend its first six weeks at #1 since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005. It's the first album by a female artist to spend its first six weeks at #1 since Norah Jones' Feels Like Home in 2004. It's the first album by a British artist to spend its first six weeks at #1 since Elton John's Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy way back in 1975.
I Dreamed A Dream is the first album to top the 3 million mark in sales in just six weeks since The Massacre. But this still wasn't enough for Boyle to overtake Swift's Fearless, which is officially the best-selling album of 2009. Fearless sold 3,217,000 copies in 2009, compared to 3,104,000 for I Dreamed A Dream. That gives Fearless a winning margin of 113,000 copies. That's the second closest margin between the year's top two albums in