Paul McCartney is back on the top of the charts, on Sunday earning his first solo number-one album in the United States in 36 years.

Egypt Station – a confident 16-track album in which McCartney experiments with a younger rock feel in addition to his classic Beatles sound – marked the first time that he has ever debuted as a solo artist on top of the benchmark US Billboard chart.

Surprisingly, McCartney did not replicate the feat in his native Britain, where Egypt Stationdebuted at number three, with veteran US rapper Eminem’s surprise album Kamikaze reigning for a second week. Egypt Station sold the equivalent of 153,000 copies in the United States in the week since its release on September 7, tracking service Nielsen Music said.

McCartney, who last topped the chart as a solo artist in 1982 with Tug of War, achieved the second largest gap between number-one albums for any artist. Johnny Cash holds the record with a break that was seven months longer than McCartney’s when the country great posthumously hit number one in 2006.