Hats Off ! Garth Brooks Tops Chart : Pop music: Country singer’s new album topples Metallica. Fans are gleeful but have no illusions--next week GNR’s sales will be counted.

Garth Brooks’ new “Ropin’ the Wind” is about to become the first country album ever to enter Billboard Magazine’s national pop chart in the No. 1 spot.

Selling more than 300,000 copies since its Sept. 10 release, Brooks’ album will unseat the heavy metal “Metallica,” which has held the No. 1 position on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart for four weeks, when the Sept. 28 issue of the trade magazine hits the newsstands this weekend.

Brooks’ reign at the pinnacle of the pop music world is expected to be short-lived, however. Retailers are reporting phenomenal sales of the two new Guns N’ Roses “Illusion” albums, which were released Tuesday and will show up on the Billboard charts next week. The “Illusion” albums may turn out to be the hottest records since Michael Jackson’s “Bad” was released in 1987. Combined sales of the two GNR records topped the 500,000 mark in their first day in the stores.

But Brooks expected short reign atop the pop list is not dampening the glee in country circles.

“This kid is so damn hot, it’s unbelievable,” said Jimmy Bowen, president of Capitol Nashville Records. “I’ve been in this business since 1953 and I can honestly say that I haven’t seen this sort of reaction to an artist since Elvis.”

The Country Music Assn. plans to throw a huge party in Brooks’ honor Tuesday in Nashville, where Mayor Philip Bredesen will proclaim “Garth Brooks Day.”

“From Florida to California, Garth Brooks rules,” said Mike Fine, whose SoundScan company compiles sales figures for Billboard and the record industry. Fine said that Brooks’ album topped sales in every retail market across the country except in the Northeast.

“Ropin’ the Wind” outsold No. 2 “Metallica” by 150,000 copies, according to SoundScan figures. However, Metallica’s album still holds the highest one-week total--600,000--of any release since Billboard started using SoundScan’s computerized system to rank records in May.

Brooks, whose last album has sold almost 5 million copies thanks to such country smashes as “Friends in Low Places” and “Unanswered Prayers,” said: “I’m not sure that this is as much a reflection of my music as it is a reflection of the great people that surround me.” Brooks was in Dallas filming a concert video.

Mario DeFilippo, senior vice president of purchasing at the Troy, Mich.-based Handleman Co., an independent distribution firm that services more than 7,000 discount retail store outlets such as K mart and Wal-Mart, said that Brooks’ top showing this week proves country music is making a comeback.

“It’s a real phenomenon,” DeFilippo said. “We’ve never seen such a response to a country artist before.”

But Russ Solomon, president of the Sacramento-based, 84-outlet Tower Records chain, expects the two Guns N’ Roses albums to push Brooks into the No. 3 spot next week.

“No doubt about it, pop music fans certainly love this guy,” Solomon said. “Garth Brooks’ record is selling great for us across the board. But it pales in comparison to Guns N’ Roses. There’s simply no competition.”

Retailers reportedly sold an estimated 250,000 copies of both Guns N’ Roses’ “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II” in the first two hours it went on sale Tuesday, said Geffen Records, the Los Angeles hard-rock band’s record label. By midday Thursday, the albums had each sold about 500,000 copies, a Geffen spokesman said.

Besides Brooks, two other albums also entered the national charts this week in the Top 20: rock groups Tesla, whose “Psychotic Supper” ranked No.13, and Dire Straits, whose “On Every Street” finished No. 15.