It was pop vs. punk at record-store cash registers last week, and pop won.

But punk put a move on.

Seventeen-year-old pop singer Britney Spears grabbed the #1 spot on the

Billboard 200 albums chart for a second straight week -- and third

week overall -- with ... Baby One More Time.

Spears' album sold 229,349 copies last week and has now sold more than

800,000 copies in the month it's been out, according to sales tracker

SoundScan. Last week's sales of the album were 100,000 ahead of the closest

competition, Americana, by punk-rockers the Offspring.

But the punk album is sneaking up. After spending all of January at #4 on the

chart, Americana, which features

href="http://media.addict.com/atn-bin/get-

music/Offspring,_The/Pretty_Fly,_For_A_White_Guy.ram">"Pretty Fly

(for a White Guy)" (RealAudio excerpt), climbed to #3 a week ago

and #2 this week on sales of 129,319 copies.

"It's that damn song," said Joe Kvidera, the general manager of the Tower

Records outlet in Chicago's Lincoln Park section, when asked to explain the

album's success.

Singer Dexter Holland said recently the band recorded Americana

relatively free of the intense scrutiny they faced in recording Ixnay on the

Hombre (1997).

"What you have to do is just get beyond that and make the record that you're

going to make, regardless of whether anybody is listening to it at all,"

Holland said.

Also moving into the competition for the pop world's nickel is veteran

songstress Cher, whose Believe entered the top 10 at #7, with

92,804 copies sold. The pop act 'N Sync, meanwhile, moved up a notch to #4,

while country-popster Shania Twain re-entered the top 10 at #8.

Cher's single "Believe" continues to sell phenomenally well across the world.

In the U.K., it's the best-selling single ever by a female artist.

At the Tower Records in Lincoln Park, the album is selling around 80 copies a

week, according to Kvidera.

"We sold out the little single [for 'Believe'] last week," he said. "We even sold

imports."

It was a relatively healthy week for rock, too, even if pop and hip-hop

dominated the top of the chart.

The week's highest debut came from Georgia-based rockers Collective Soul,

whose Dosage entered at #21. The album features the single

music/Collective_Soul/Run.ram">"Run" (RealAudio excerpt).

At #22 and rising quickly was the soundtrack to the NBC-TV miniseries "The

'60s," which features a new version of Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom,"

performed by Dylan and blues-rock singer Joan Osborne, along with such

'60s hits as Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and the Band's "The Weight."

The miniseries aired at the beginning of the chart week, and the album

subsequently sold 66,825 copies, more than triple the number sold a week

earlier.

Other notable debuts included the country trio Emmylou Harris, Dolly

Parton and Linda Ronstadt, whose Trio II, a follow-up to their 1987

collaboration, includes a cover of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush." It

entered at #64.

Debuting at #65 was country singer Mark Chesnutt's I Don't Want to

Miss a Thing, whose title song and first single is a cover of the 1998

Aerosmith hit.

As for the hip-hoppers, Fugees singer and rapper Lauryn Hill led the pack at

#3 with The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, down from #2 a week

ago. The late Tupac Shakur's Greatest Hits rose from #8 to #6;

rock-rapper Everlast's Whitey Ford Sings the Blues moved up a

spot to #9 and Foxy Brown's Chyna Doll, which debuted at #1 two

weeks ago, slid from #4 to #10.

The next three spots on the chart were occupied by hip-hoppers too: DMX's

Flesh of My Flesh -- Blood of My Blood (#11), Will Smith's Big

Willie Style (#12) and Jay-Z's Hard Knock Life (#13). Jay-Z and

DMX are set to co-headline the "Hard Knock Life" tour, which begins Feb.

27.

Also in the top 10 were country's Dixie Chicks at #5.

New Orleans rapper Silkk the Shocker dropped out of the top 10 after a

three-week stay there. Made Man, his third album, is now at #15,

down from #7.

Dave Matthews and accompanist Tim Reynolds are also on the decline after

a strong start. Their Live at Luther College, in which the two

perform acoustic versions of Dave Matthews Band songs, fell from #16 to

#19. It debuted a month ago at #2.

Professional wrestling increased its presence in the pop market while losing

ground on the chart. The World Wrestling Federation's WWF: The

Music, Volume 3, which features such ring-entrance music as

href="http://media.addict.com/atn-bin/get-

music/WWF/Stone_Cold_Steve_Austin.ram">"Stone Cold Steve

Austin" (RealAudio excerpt), fell three spots to #18, even though

its sales increased from 71,305 to 73,566.

Moving from bodyslams to thunderjams, noted remixer Fatboy Slim's

You've Come A Long Way, Baby finished the week at #75, down

two spots. The album previously had leaped nearly 20 spots two weeks in a

row.

Swing revivalists Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, who zoomed up the chart a week

ago following a Super Bowl appearance, started sliding back down with

their self-titled album. It dropped 30 places to #88 -- still well ahead of

where it stood two weeks ago, #133.

After a one-week entry into the chart to a lukewarm response, the Artist

Formerly Known as Prince's 1999 -- The New Master made a quick

exit. It had debuted a week ago at #150 to sales of 7,999 copies, but slid off

the chart this week.