Blog Posts by Paul Grein

Stray Cats had a top five hit in 1983 called "(She's) Sexy + 17." That's a tricky combination, at least when you're a Disney-created teen idol. Just ask Miley Cyrus, whose Can't Be Tamed slips from #3 to #9 in its second week on The Billboard 200. The album has sold 135,000 copies in its first two weeks, which is well below Cyrus' usual standards.  Her last full-length studio album, Breakout, sold 534,000 copies in its first two weeks in the summer of 2008. The Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack sold 225,000 copies in its first two weeks in the spring of 2009. Cyrus' The Time Of Our Lives EP sold 215,000 copies in its first two weeks in September.

Cyrus is also having some trouble on the Hot Digital Songs chart. The album's punchy title track falls from #12 to #21. The four other songs from the album that appeared on the 200-deep Digital Songs chart last week all fell off the chart this week. Those songs are "Stay" (#47 last week), "Liberty Walk" (#80), "Two More Lonely People"

This past weekend marked the 40th anniversary of a radio institution, American Top 40. The show, originally hosted by the inimitable Casey Kasem, first aired on seven stations over the July 4th weekend in 1970. Casey hosted the show for 24 years (from 1970 to 1988 and again from 1998 to 2004).

The beauty of American Top 40 is its simplicity. As Casey said every week, "Three hours once a week with AT40 and you can find out how your favorite songs are doing from coast to coast." The show is a neatly organized package that brings order and clarity to a messy world.

To mark the show's 40th anniversary, I've prepared this list of the 40 longest-running #1 hits on Billboard's Hot 100 in the past 40 years. "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men is the biggest #1 hit of the past four decades. It logged 16 weeks on top in 1995-1996.

I'll get to my countdown in a minute, but first, here are a few key milestones in AT40 history. The #1 hit on the first show in July 1970 was Three Dog

You can never count anyone out in pop music. Train, a San Francisco-based group that hadn't so much as cracked the top 40 since 2003, has the best-selling song of the first half of 2010 with "Hey, Soul Sister." The unassuming but widely pleasing pop song sold 3,319,000 copies in the first six months of the year. Its success marks a major comeback for the group, which first hit the big time in 2001 with its top five, Grammy-winning song "Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me)." By 2005, the group was barely on the radar, with two songs that died "Bubbling Under" the Hot 100. The group's leader, Pat Monahan, tried a solo album in 2007, but its key single, "Her Eyes," also stalled in "Bubbling Under."

Lady Antebellum's Need You Now is the best-selling album of the first six months, with sales of 2,325,000. The heartfelt title track is the #3 song of the period. The country trio and Usher are the only acts with both a song and an album in the top five at mid-year. Lady A won its first Grammy in

Eminem's Recovery enters The Billboard 200 at #1 with first-week sales of 741,000. That's the biggest one-week sales tally since AC/DC's Black Ice stormed on to the chart with sales of 784,000 in October 2008. Recovery is Eminem's fourth album to achieve weekly sales north of 700K. It follows The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show and Encore.

Eminem is the first artist in Nielsen/SoundScan history (which dates to 1991) to top the 700K plateau in weekly sales with four albums. Runner-up Garth Brooks topped that mark with three albums: The Hits, Sevens and Double Live.

Recovery sold substantially more copies in its first week than Eminem's last album, Relapse, which opened with sales of 608K in June 2009. In just one week, Recovery is already #8 for the year-to-date.

Recovery is Eminem's sixth #1 album. Among rappers, only Jay-Z has had as many or more #1 albums (11). What's more, Recovery is Eminem's sixth consecutive album to reach #1. That's the longest string of consecutive #1

It sounds strange to say this, but Michael Jackson is coming off one of the biggest years of his career. Jackson has sold more than 9 million albums and nearly 13 million digital tracks in the U.S. in the year since his death. He was hotter than he'd been at any time since his glory days in the '80s. He even achieved a career goal that had eluded him in his lifetime--a hit movie.

I think what happened in the past year is that people focused on Jackson's music for the first time in many years, and remembered how much they liked it. Sadly, it took Jackson's death for people to look past all the controversies--large and small, troubling and trivial--that turned a lot of people off.

In the year since he died, Jackson has sold 9,023,000 albums in the U.S. This has enabled him to vault from #47 on Nielsen/SoundScan's running list of the top 200 album sellers in its history (which dates to 1991) to #18 this week. That's a tremendous one-year gain.

Jackson's posthumous sales are among the

Drake's first full-length album, Thank Me Later, enters The Billboard 200 at #1, with first-week sales of 447,000. This constitutes one of the biggest openings ever for the debut album by a rap artist. It's bigger than Eminem's first week with The Slim Shady LP in February 1999 (283,000). It's even bigger than Kanye West's first week with The College Dropout in February 2004 (441,000). And today's sales climate is less favorable now than it was back then (to put it mildly).

Only three debut albums by rap artists have had had bigger first weeks than Thank Me Later just achieved. 50 Cent's Get Rich Or Die Tryin' sold 872,000 copies in its first week in February 2003. Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle sold 803,000 copies in its first week in November 1993. Puff Daddy & the Family's No Way Out sold 561,000 copies its first week in July 1997. (Note: 50 Cent's album was preceded six weeks earlier by an album, Guess Who's Back?, on another label, but it was his official debut, as this is

Jewel received good news when The Billboard 200 album chart was released last Wednesday. Her new album, Sweet And Wild, debuted at #10. That kept Jewel's string of top 10 albums intact (if just barely). Every regular studio album that Jewel has released, dating back to her 1995 debut, has made the top 10. At least that was true until mid-day on Friday, when Nielsen/SoundScan re-ran the chart, adding in sales information from a digital data provider who had missed the initial deadline. With the new information, Jewel's album debuted at #11, which breaks her string of top 10 studio albums.

The revision was bad news for Jewel, but good news for Lady Gaga, whose long-running hit The Fame assumed the #10 slot. (On the initial chart, it had dropped from #6 to #11.) This is the 47th week in the top 10 for The Fame, which is closing in on Shania Twain's Come On Over as the album that has logged the most weeks in the top 10 without reaching #1. (Details below.)

The change came too late for

Christina Aguilera's Bionic enters The Billboard 200 at #3. It's the pop veteran's fourth consecutive studio album to debut in the top five, though it fell short of her first three releases, all of which debuted at #1 or #2. Bionic sold 111,000 copies in its first week, which is less than one-third of what Aguilera's last studio album, Back To Basics, sold in its first week in August 2006 (346,000). And that was a two-disc album.

Granted, sales aren't what they were in 2006. But just in the past 12 months, 12 albums by female stars have managed bigger openings. And not all of these women are hot newcomers, such as Susan Boyle and Ke$ha. Five of the female artists who have gotten off to faster starts in the past year have been around even longer than Aguilera (Barbra Streisand, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige and Monica).

The disappointing showing of "Not Myself Tonight," the first single from the album, is taking a toll. The song entered the Hot 100 at #23 in the May 1